Bye, Bye River Birch Tree: 11 '16

Notice anything missing between the photo above and the one below?

It's called a Tree!

The River Birch in our front yard began rocking violently during Hurricane Mathew.  At the peak of the storm, the only thing holding it upright was a single root growing under our neighbors driveway.   The  wind was so strong that the tree's root system was cracking  their driveway trying to uproot, but the pavement held long enough that the tree did not blow over.  Even so,  our HOA decided not to risk having it come down in the next storm, so they hired a contractor to remove it .   Below  photos of the full process.

First Cut

The biggest challenge was that my neighbor was not home and  there were two branches over-hanging my neighbor's driveway that had to come down without damage to his vehicle.

The contractor met the challenge by using two people in the cutting process.  One did the cutting and the other held onto the branch and directed its fall away from the house and vehicle.

 Then  they began removing all the branches on the opposite side  so they had unobstructed access to the branches overhanging the car.  Just in case, they covered my neighbors car with blankets.

A ground crew removed the limbs  and branches that were being dropped from above.

They also finished removing the larger segments of trunk  until it  was completely level with the ground.

Next week the contractor  will be back with a stump grinder to remove the trunk and whatever roots can be reached from the surface.

While I fully understood why it had to be removed,  I still  felt very sad watching the tree come down.  It almost felt like losing a member of the family.  We've nourished it, and watched it grow from a young sapling (See above photo from Fall of 2007)  into the mature  beauty it had become before the storm.   It will be missed.