Lakeside cypress pruned, seven trees to the bank

The calendar set this job before the crew did. Leyland cypress wants pruning while it is dormant, so the work was booked for before mid-March and for dry ground. Cut them in growth and you get a flush of weak regrowth instead of the shape you were after. Dry ground mattered for a different reason: on a lake bank, wet is the difference between dragging trees down it and rutting it.

The cypress ran along the lake side of the house. Height came down moderately and each tree was shaped to grow back correctly rather than sheared into a wall. One more cypress on the side of the house got the same treatment. Every cutting from the pruning left with us.

Seven trees came out — a pine beside the stairway, the two trees lateral to it, a sycamore, and a cluster of three. Anything that could reach the house or the dock on the way down was roped and directed rather than left to a face cut.

The dock’s anchoring cable had to be dropped to the ground before any felling started. A cable under tension strung across a drop zone is not something you work around.

All seven were felled, cut into four-foot lengths, dragged down to the burn spot on the bank and stacked into a pile.