Thursday, July 30, 2020

Tree Be Gone

My neighbor has a tree in his backyard. It’s not a fruit tree and it’s not an ornamental tree. It’s what I call a trash tree—something that most likely sprouted from a seed buried by a squirrel, and it’s getting bigger, year by year. Now its limbs and the myriad vines growing within them have encroached several feet into my yard. I was getting tired of mowing around the branches and not being able to mow up to the property line. It’s as if the growing tree is claiming an increasing amount of my yard for itself.

So after I mowed my yard this morning, I got out my electric hedge trimmer and started whacking all the limbs and vines that would fit between the trimmer’s teeth. In about a half hour, I whacked enough limbs and vines to completely fill my 45 gallon trash receptacle.

But this isn’t the end of it. Those limbs and vines will grow back. So I began thinking: what can I do to kill this tree? I searched Google for methods of killing trees. And indeed, there are a number of ways to kill a tree.

This tree is a goner; it’s living on borrowed time. It just doesn’t know it yet. If you’re a tree, you had better keep your branches on your side of my property line. If you don’t, then sooner or later you’re going to be having a very bad day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good luck with that tree -- I'm not a fan of getting rid of trees but I have one from my neighbor like this too. Many years ago I took down a huge tree and my neighbor got very mad at me. He said we used it for shade and it made my house more comfortable --but those roots were heading to my water lines. Volunteers started everywhere and now are pushing their way into my privacy fence creating a big hole. Since then I have new neighbors and they could not care less about the trees ---now they are letting the vines crawl over as well.

Oh the joys of neighbors who do not feel the same as you do when it comes to pruning.

Thanks for writing.
L