Goodbye to a Cedar

 One of my incense cedars (Calocedrus decurrens) has been dying for a few years, from the top down, and random branches.  Incense cedars are my native cedar, and not nearly as pretty as the deodara cedar, native to the Himalayas, of which I have one.  It's the droopy branched one that has the rose shaped cones.  The incense cedar seeds break open to look like little duck bills, and are sticky (well, so is the deodara going by the goo on Mickey's paws after fooling around under it!). 

Back to the dying incense.  So much of the top part was dead I knew it had to come down, especially seeing it was the tallest tree in the neighborhood, visible as I drove up the side street.  It never lost a lot of branches on windy days, but it wasn't a guarantee that wouldn't change.  Plus, with the wildfires and hot dry summers, I didn't want to risk lightning striking the dead tippy top. 

The tree company that dropped off the chips gave me a very reasonable estimate to cut the tree down.  Very reasonable because they would only cut it down, not take the branches etc. away, or chip them up.  That would have been nice, but much more expensive!  They would cut the limbs and logs into manageable sizes though.

They came Friday morning, and two hours later the tree was gone.  The crows and ravens will be disappointed, they often hung out in the dead top branches. 

limbs coming down

limbs all gone

Mr. Nosey Mickey had a front row seat to the show. 

He was so confused when he was allowed out. 

First Sniff

They left the branches nice and neat, in little bundles facing the same way!

The trunk is now logs, and lots of them!

It won't be a problem to get rid of the logs, there are lots of people with wood burning stoves in the area. 

The stump is not as low as they wanted, but the original owners of the house put rocks everywhere, including ringing tree trunks, which the trees grew around, so the last cut was hitting rock and they had to stop.

Even though I have many weeks worth of green can pickups ahead of me (actually every other week, green alternates with red can recycling), I'm glad it's done!