A dead sidehill tree and a reopened water view

One tree on this property had to come out, and it was the dead one on the sidehill.

Dead wood on a slope is the part of a view job that has nothing to do with the view. The fibre will not hold a hinge the way sound wood does, the fall is downhill and gaining, and the ground underfoot runs the same direction. It was felled first, before anybody was up in a rope anywhere near it.

The rest was trimming, and the work was in how little came off. Low limbs and greenery blocking the water view from the house were taken back roughly twenty to twenty-five feet up, across a stretch running from the backyard staircase and gangway out to the property line on the far side. Anything cut outright was small new growth, taken inside the guidelines TVA sets for ground like this. The hardwoods themselves stayed where they were.

Cuts were adjusted with the homeowner as the work went. On a view job that is the only way to land it — what reads as an open sightline from the deck is not what it looks like from forty feet up a trunk, and it is always easier to take one more limb than to put one back.

The estimate also carried an option for two oaks beside the driveway to get the same light trimming.

A day and a quarter.