An oak over the pool, a sycamore at the road

Two large trees, and neither one had a direction to fall in.

The oak stood behind the house next to the swimming pool. It was alive and sound, with no sign of insect damage or disease anywhere on it — which is the reason it could be climbed at all. But a pool on one side, a shed on another and the house behind made a small target for anything leaving the crown. It came down from the top in pieces, each one directed away from the water.

The sycamore was in the lower front yard, between the house and the road. Same condition: alive, sound, climbable. The road is what changes that job. Wood that rolls the wrong way at the bottom of a slope ends up somewhere that is no longer your property.

Both trees came down piece by piece. Brush went through the chipper, the small loading tractor moved rounds out to the truck, and all of it left — wood and brush both, nothing stacked and nothing burned.

A two-man crew ran most of it, close to three days end to end. Two trees is not a small job when neither one can be felled whole.