House Post: Trees Are Expensive

When we bought out house, it had stood vacant for quite a while – I believe as long as two years. The previous owners had moved out, since they were elderly and downsizing. Mostly, this was fine. They obviously did a decent job of managing it.

One area where this caused problems was in landscaping. They had someone mowing the lawn, but the back half of our lot is wooded – and there were a lot of trees that were either dying or dead.

In the three years we’ve owned the house we’ve had four trees come down – two of them into a neighbor’s yard. We have 3/4 of an acre in a crowded city area. (“Crowded” for a rural Vermont city of 9,000, which actually makes it among the top five biggest cities in the state, we’re tiny, okay?)

Obviously that’s not a good number, and there were still trees or tree limbs that did not look good to my (highly inexperienced) eye, so a number of weeks ago I called a tree service to come out and look everything over. They identified three trees to be worked on and then also suggested we have them trim back bushes & trees away from one side of the house.

This week, they came out and did the work. For lots of money. But the peace of mind of not having more trees to fall in our neighbor’s yard and/or on power lines is worth it, right?

The biggest (physically and $$$) problem: a number of limbs on this huge Norway Maple were diseased or dying, and they hung over our driveway.

I don’t have a picture of the second-biggest problem, a tall dead tree in our back lot, you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

Crabapple tree in the backyard that needed desperately to be pruned.

And the far side of the house, very overgrown.

It took the crew a full day, but they cleaned everything up.

The first is taken from the deck, the second taken from almost the same spot I took the before picture – just a panorama instead of a tight shot on the tree.

Back side from a different angle, because why be consistent?

And here’s the back lot, which I realize is not terribly helpful without a before picture, but oh well. Imagine the tree that’s on the ground standing up instead.

The maple in the driveway will take some getting used to. I have high hopes that the bare spot on the bank – which was previously moss until I killed it all with some stuff I bought – will now take grass, both to look better and to help stave off erosion.