The Tree Situation

The weekend was nice—overcast, but with a comfortable temperature and no rain. So I did a chore I've been putting off.

My neighbor's yard (one of my neighbors) has two trees growing near the border with my yard. No one planted them. They may have grown from seeds planted by squirrels or perhaps they sprouted from seeds that drifted there on the wind. The trees are what I call "trash trees" because they have no fruit, no pretty blossoms, nothing at all to make them worthy of being in someone's yard. From examining its leaves, I can see that one of them is identical to a tree in a yard a few doors up the street, but that "parent" tree is now 50 feet tall and very big around. This "offspring" tree in my neighbor's yard is/was about 3 feet from my yard and maybe 10 feet from my garage. I've been watching it grow for a few years and I've been getting concerned about it.

So on Sunday, I went to my garage and grabbed my small electric chainsaw, plugged it into a long power cord, and I went outside and cut that tree into pieces. I left a four foot stump that I still need to take down, but my chainsaw needs sharpening and I don't have a chainsaw file. I'm not even sure what size file to buy, but I think 5/32 (inch) will work. Then I can attack the the remainder of the trunk still jutting from the ground.

After I cut down the tree, Nuria and I spent two hours cutting it into 4-foot long pieces. The trunk and all the limbs, which were relatively small, were cut up. I used the chainsaw and Nuria used lopping shears to remove branches from the trunk. We stuffed my trash receptacle full of tree-trunk and limbs and leaves and had enough small limbs left over for maybe two more receptacles. Which I don't have. So when the trash is picked up, the receptacle will immediately get filled again.

There's another tree in my neighbor's yard, also about three feet from my yard, that really bothers me. It's going to be a big tree, too, and like the tree I cut down, it's just a trash tree. Its winter-naked limbs sprout small pink blossoms for a few weeks in early spring, but that's the only time of year that it's worth looking at. It's too close to the border with my yard, and its limbs hang over my yard, and every autumn it drops several trash receptacles volume of large brown leaves into my yard, which the wind then blows into my outside basement stairwell, whereupon they settle at the bottom of the stairwell and prevent rainwater from going into the stairwell drain. So I'm kept busy shoveling leaves out of the stairwell several times every autumn. It's an extra task I really don't need. So the tree must go.

The previous owner of the house told me he didn't care about the trees. But he sold the house and I can't contact the current owner because he's never at home. But I want to do the courtesy of asking him if it's okay before I cut down that tree, something I didn't do with the first tree. Although, I also have in mind Admiral Grace Hopper's wisdom: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."