The Zombie Maple tree in my back yard has been my nemesis since I moved into this house. As soon as I bought it, I hired an arborist to tell me the state of the trees on the property and what I should do about them.
As vigorous and beautiful as the maple tree was (at that time, it stood over 80 feet tall, the tallest tree in the neighborhood), he told me the tree was dead, it just didn't know it yet. It was severely and irretrievably infested with wood borers and rotting from the inside.
He recommended removing it, but that was (at that time) $900 I didn't have. Since then, the tree has dropped rotted limbs until it's now about 30-40 feet tall. 1/5 of the trunk split off when it was still nearly 80 feet tall and fell entirely across my yard and partly into my neighbor's. I've been chopping that section of trunk for 3 years now, and have reduced it to a mere 20 feet of trunk, and find myself somewhat defeated. This section is too thick for my chainsaw.
That dip in the fence in the background is the fence the tree loves dropping limbs on. That section has been repaired by me 5 times in the past 6 years (I can't afford to replace it).
This is a stack of the most recent 20' section I chopped up:
One of my daughter's friends asked if they could have it for firewood, since they'd bought a house with a fireplace. They never came to pick it up, so today, I am hauling it all to the curb for Big Trash Day.
My next step is to figure out how to chop down these three sections:
Notice the power lines running through them. Those lines are why these trees must go. The two large ones, the first and last photos, were actually on my neighbor's property, but when she put the stockade fence up between our properties, she conveniently fenced them onto my side. Technically, they are still on her property, regardless of where she placed her fence. Realistically, they are now my problem because it's my powerlines they are growing into.
But now my rest break is over, and I have to go back outside and haul Zombie Maple bits to the curb, and try to figure out how I will get the last 20' chopped up so I can haul that to the curb, too.
Everyone else is considering planting trees for Earth Day today, and I must be contrary I suppose, for I am chopping trees to pieces.