GOODBYE, SYCAMORE!

Yesterday - when it was sunny - the tree fellers came to take down a sycamore which I inherited when I moved here and which, being female, showers the garden with seeds every year and has outgrown its space. I also got rid of a cotoneaster which had grown too far and a weeping birch which had joined the oak tree across the path. The shed on the left is mine, on the right belongs to the house next door. Some of my Christmas Tree branches are on the right-hand side. Lots of lower branches of the sycamore had already gone before I got down the garden...

Being able to sit there so casually has to be the result of long practice and knowing what you're doing, which always helps. The willow leaves on the top right are going too, from my next-door-neighbour's garden. It is getting on a bit, branches are dying so it's been pollarded...

The lad above is the cutter and his mate had the job of plodding up and down the garden path, along the side alleyway to dump all the branches on the parking space at the front and some way down the side, too. I was asked to move my car and I put it across the road.

The boss arrived with the shredder and this is the start of feeding the unwanted greenery into the shredder's business end.
Just a small vehicle (I'm kidding) and making a tremendous noise, too.
This is the 'scoop' at the back where all the thin branches went.
Stuart had asked if I would leave the tree trunk rather than get it taken away so he could take the logs he'd cut to his father to use on his wood burner. I asked and the tree trunk was cut into handy sized pieces. They're all on the compost heap which is directly under where the tree was. Now it's up to Stuart to bring his trailer and take them down to the stables. The post sticking up against the blue plastic is the limit of my boundary. A self-sown honeysuckle had been growing up the sycamore for several years and the workman managed to save that.
The bare trunk and the tuft at the top is all that's left of the willow but it will sprout again in due course. On the right you can just see the dreaded walnut which has already overgrown two gardens and it won't be long before it creeps over another - and that's apart from the garden it's growing in.

The clearing up was particularly good. Everything that was cut off was cleared up, all the small twiglets and heaps of leaves which were scraped together with a leaf rake. Once these had been shredded a workman took the leaf blower along the path to clear away any bits they'd missed, the frontage was cleared and the road, which had some leaves on it. The stumps of the sycamore and two shrubs had had slots cut in the base which remained in the ground, poison scooped into them and then covered with handfuls of earth to keep it safe.

I'd provided them with tea and home made cake and it time for them to leave - and I haven't paid yet, either!