Bringing Down the Trees

I didn't need any overhead lights early this morning as I sat at the computer -- there's much more natural light in this room than there was yesterday. Outside the slider door I have an unobstructed view of the neighbor's fruit trees, a sight I have never seen from this window.

Last night Tom and a friend took down two trees, two huge trees, that had grown to mammoth proportions in a remarkably short amount of time.

One was a sequoia. Here's what I wrote in a blog post four years ago:

It seemed innocent enough at the time. About seven years ago Tom, a long-time bonsai gardener, placed a sequoia seedling in the back yard, awaiting transplant from its whiskey barrel into a proper bonsai pot. It was out of the way -- between the patio and the fence that separates our house from the neighbor's. You know how life gets busy and your forget what you had in mind? Well, that's what happened to Tom. 

The baby sequoia, however, did not forget; it did what it was designed to do -- it grew. It pushed its roots through the drain hole in the bottom of the pot and kept right on growing deep into the earth below. Now over 10 feet tall (they can grow up to 300 feet!), the tree is trapped between the patio and the enormous pine tree in the background of this photo.

Then I asked if anyone would like to come and dig up the tree. If they would come and get it, it was theirs. We had no takers.

The 10-foot sequoia, July 2010

The tree continued to grow. By December of 2011 it measured 15 feet. We cut off the top and brought it in the house for our Christmas tree. It was the most lovely one we ever had!

The sequoia, 15 feet tall in December 2011

Cutting down the tree...

...and lighting it up for Christmas

But that didn't stop the tree from growing. By now it was, maybe, 40 feet tall. With that sequoia and the "enormous pine tree" next to it (which also kept growing), Tom talked to his friend Jerry and they took the trees down last night.

This is no place for a giant sequoia!

Sequoia in the foreground, pine tree in background

To give you a bit of perspective!

Jerry with his chain saw

Down it goes!

The stump

According to the rings, the pine was only 13 years old. When we try to do a garden the ground seems so unresponsive. How is it that it does so well with growing trees?

The trees were barely down when we discovered a tree frog in our house! (We put him in the rhodedendron garden, which is nearly as overgrown as the trees we took out.) I wonder what other changes we'll notice, now that those two enormous trees are down. One thing for sure -- more sunlight! I'm going to really enjoy that!