A Sad Day for a Tree Hugger

August 10, 2020 The first week of August, Bob and I took a break for our annual beach week in Ocean City, NJ. Bob stayed in MD for work and I returned to Lee and the house to find that Randy had already gotten started on cutting trees and excavating the “backyard”. While we had gone over the tree situation, and knew we needed to remove a large dead oak and a number of large hemlocks overshadowing the building, it was still a shock to see the reality. After a very long day on the road, I walked around looking and looking, and being really sad. It’s not like you get a do-over when you cut down a bunch of trees. 🙁

I really LOVE trees, and having 10 wooded acres of our own and many more to enjoy surrounding our new house had huge appeal to me. Even though I knew that the house was being damaged by them, I still didn’t want to cut them down…. However once people saw it, they loved the new look and said it should have been done a long time ago. (I think they were just trying to make me feel better)

Here are some before and after photos taken from above. Too bad I didn’t have any before pics that match perfectly. The one big dead oak had to go, and the biggest hemlock was really enormous.

Below you will see a view from inside, and unfortunately I never took a specific photo, but out there was a big pit that was originally intended to be a small pond, but there was no water. It needed to be filled in but when you see these before photos of all the vegetation (the pit is on the right of the middle photo but hidden), you will understand my shock at the new look!