When we first moved into our house, the backyard was lush with trees, including a white oak that was over 250' tall and had 2 trunks. There was a cute little tire swing attached to a low branch and it made an idyllic shaded play place for Bug in the summer. I couldn't help but think of Hometree from Avatar when I looked at it. It was massive and it probably could have housed a tribe of people.
Being that it was so large (and who knows how old), I was concerned about its health and wanted to have it inspected before letting our toddler run under it's potentially fatal branches. None of the trees on the property had ever been pruned so it stood to reason that this tree hadn't had proper care either. My Great-Grandfather was killed while felling a tree when my Grandma was 16 so I heard about how dangerous falling trees could be a lot growing up. I also had a tree fall on my house during a windstorm when I was a kid. I don't mess with questionable trees.
I called the city forester early July to have him come take a look at the oak and give me pointers about where and how to plant our fruit trees. He was supposed to come out in a couple weeks but I never saw him or heard from him again. I got kinda busy, what with having a baby early August and all, and the tree went to the bottom of my to-do list. Hubster and I noticed a foul odor (and by foul, I mean it smelled like a decaying body) by the tree when we were enjoying the summer and we chalked the stench up to a dead deer or other critter somewhere over our fence. October rolled around and a lot of orange mushrooms popped up all around the tree. After consulting Dr. Google (he has a PhD in Mycology, you know), it was concluded that they were Jack-O-Lantern mushrooms aka False Chanterelles, which grow on decaying trees and roots. Mushrooms don't grow on living things. This was not a good sign. I called the forester again (apparently the one I spoke to in July had been fired, which explains why he never called me back or showed up) and when she came out, she confirmed that the tree was rotting and needed to be cut down or it would fall down.
Because it had 2 trunks, whenever it rained all the water would run down the trunks and pool where they met, eventually rotting the tree; hence the dead body smell. We had the tree guys take down 3 dead cherries, 2 flowering pears, a tiny willow, 1 dogwood that had the same rotting bifurcation problem as the oak, and 2 hickories in addition to cutting down the large oak and pruning the one next to the house. I very much miss the huge tree and there is a very empty place in our backyard where it once stood. We took down the 2 hickories that were right behind the oak because there is a semi-mature hickory that will hopefully fill in and replace the oak with grandeur now that it isn't crowded and competing for sun and water. The dogwood also had a buddy, a fellow dogwood, which was smaller and has a single trunk. We're hoping it fills in the gap as well.
See the HUGE tree behind Hubster and Bug? Yeah, that's the one that had to come down.
See that gigantic tree smackdab in the middle of this picture? Yeah, that's the oak. Yes, it was bigger than our house is. It was quite a bit older too.
No, seriously. That thing was HUGE!
I wish I'd snapped these pictures 20 minutes earlier. The hickories looked liked they'd been dipped in liquid gold and the dogwood was ablaze. These were taken the end of October. That dogwood is the one that was cut down. You can see one of the dead cherries in the left of the photo. The two hickories closest to the oak (to the left of it in the photo) were the ones we cut down. We spared the smaller one to the right.
From left to right:
3 cherries, a dogwood, and the white oak. The tree photobombing the right side of the photo is a flowering pear that we also had cut down.
First branch off. That guy is nuts!
See the red arrow in the photo below? It's also pointing to a crazy person. He's the guy we originally had come quote out how much this would all be. We went with his competition because we'd get to keep the wood and sell some to the lumber mill. This job was so big the guy we went with had the first guy (and by "guy" I mean him and about 5 of his men) come do half the work. It took 2 tree removal companies to get these trees down! Both business owners are former Army SF soldiers and this is how they get their adrenaline rush these days.
Total cost of tree removal? $2,650. The white oak alone cost $1,800. That price included 1 trip to the lumber mill which got us $330 back. We have a descent sized pile of unchopped firewood (for our wood-converted-to-gas fireplace...) and there is still 1 hickory and 1 cherry laying in the woods we need to cut up, but all in all, the price we paid only bought us piece of mind that those trees won't be falling on our house, our kids, or ourselves.