the redwood tree

Mar 3, 2016

This is kind of a sad story… but an interesting one nonetheless.  We didn’t realize, when we bought our house, the damage the huge redwood tree we now owned was doing to our property, as well as our neighbors’ properties.  We didn’t consider, either, that we were buying a huge redwood tree to begin with (lesson: look at the trees, too).  This tree was brought over from California during a trip to the redwoods 50 years ago and planted underneath the power lines along the alley, right next to the garage, and the neighbor’s house.  Redwoods, apparently, grow super fast in this PNW climate, so it grew… fast… and began to ruin things in order to grow its vast root system.  The tree guys told us that, really, there’s no other choice but to take it. So, we did.  And it cost a lot, though our happy-to-see-the-tree-go neighbors did help with the cost a bit.

It was so big that only one tree company could take it, and to do so they had to rent a crane (they already had one, but needed a bigger one).  This is the part where it was interesting, and insane.  It took 3.5 days to take it down.  We had all kinds of noise, all kinds of people coming out to watch, and all kinds of crazy things happening outside.  The one guy in the photos (the one in the crane and the tree) worked his way from top to bottom, cutting that 150 foot beast into sections for the crane to carry down.  Some of the sections were 8000 pounds.  For real– a 4 foot, 8 thousand pound piece of trunk, chainsawed by a guy strapped to the tree and hauled over the top of the house by a crane.  It was something we will never forget.

Amazingly, the weather turned, for that week and that week only, sunny and gorgeous out.  Now it’s rainy again.  And we have a giant stump to figure out what the heck to do with.  Don’t even ask how many thousands of dollars it will cost to get it ground out.

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this busy, beautiful life
snow!

1 Comment

  • Reply Tracey Morris March 10, 2016 at 5:46 pm

    Sooooo sad, but totally understandable! All I could think about looking at these photos was all that GREAT WOOD you could keep to make lots of cool things with! Did you keep a stump?

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