More trees come down

We were surprised yesterday when a tree service crew showed up at our closest neighbor's house at about 6:30 a.m. We knew that the neighbor, who lives in the Paris area and who inherited her father's house when he died 5 or 6 years ago, wanted to have two very tall pine trees taken down. They were growing really close to the house and must have been 50 or 60 feet tall.

In Google Maps, I just measured the distance between these two trees and our front deck/terrasse. They stood about 65 feet (20 meters) from us. They stand no more. I'm showing the photos in this post in chronological order. In the first one, above, the top of the smaller tree was just getting ready to fall to the ground.

Above, you can see the larger tree before its trimming began. It's very possible that the man who climbed up into the tree to cut off the branches was the same one who did the same job on our big blue spruce tree last winter. He seems to be a local specialist in this line of work, since we had contracted to have the job done by our regular landscaping service but were asked to write the tree-climber a separate check to pay his fee.

These photos are very back-lit because the sun was just coming up over the horizon when the work was done. It all seemed to go smoothly, and the two tall pines were down well before lunchtime. There was of course a lot of noise — chain saws and chippers buzzed and whined, and the five member of the work crew whistled and shouted to communicate with each other over the noise of the machines. Part of the crew worked all afternoon chipping up branches and raking up debris, using leaf blowers.

I took some of these photos from our deck, and others from the yard on the north side of our house. The neighbor's house will certainly get a lot more sunlight without the big pine trees growing in front of her windows on the west-facing façade. We still have a screen of trees in our yard that block views of her windows and give us privacy. At this point, at least, she doesn't live here full-time. We're hoping she's not preparing the house and property with a view to selling it.

There was no sign of the neighbor yesterday, and we think she cleared off just in time to avoid all the noise and commotion. She was there the day before. We assume she went back to Paris. When she's here, she leaves her front gate open. Yesterday afternoon when the work crew left, they closed it. So she must not be here. We know her just slightly and have only ever talked with her a few times, briefly.