Japanese maple felled
October 16, 2025
This is one of the bigger changes I've made to the yard. I began planning a few weeks in advance - scheduling it, watching instructional videos, gathering some gear, etc. About a week before the chosen date, I started to look carefully at the tree for about ten minutes at a time, figuring out which way it was likely to go and what might need to be done to help it along that way. Two days before, my neighbor, who used to be a tree surgeon, saw me doing this and came over to see what was up. After we talked about it a bit, he lent me some of his old gear and I cut off several limbs on one side with a long pole saw to help put the weight in the direction it seemed most likely to go (which, thankfully, was into the open front yard).
Then the day came and my father-in-law arrived at around 10 in the morning with his gear. I climbed up and tied the neighbor's heavy rope about halfway up and then FIL walked the other end into the yard and got into a tug-of-war stance. I pulled on the helmet he lent me and got to work. It's been literal decades since I cut down a tree, and it was as much fun, or perhaps more, than when I was running around the woods behind my house in my early teens chopping down dead trees with a hatchet to build forts. This time it was with a chainsaw. I had some trepidation when it wasn't beginning to fall when I thought it should, but another inch or so and it went exactly where I wanted it to. It was a great feeling of accomplishment.
Once it was down, I found less rot in the wood around the base than I'd expected, but it was only going to get worse (result of landscapers volcano mulching it in the past) and plus it was a non-native that threw out tons of seedlings everywhere. Some of its wood went to the firewood pile and will be burned for probably the next two winters after this one. The rest went to turning a small brush pile I'd started into a large one. Oh, and a couple small limbs were cut into "walking sticks" for my daughter.
I transplanted two eastern redbuds that were growing in my vegetable garden to either side of its stump. I'm not sure the larger one (about 4 1/2 feet tall) will survive; it was much harder to get the roots out than I expected and I ended up cutting more off than I would have liked. I think the smaller one will do fine, as I was able to scoop out pretty much the entirety of its roots. I planted a bunch of redbud seeds I scavenged from various places, now sitting in pots in the vegetable garden, so if the larger one doesn't make it, hopefully I'll have another to take its place, and some more on top of that to plant elsewhere.
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