Goodbye to my prized white birch tree

May 4, 2020 – Goodbye to my prized white birch tree

         Last week we had the huge 40-foot white birch tree professionally taken down that I had planted the first spring we lived here. [That was 22 years ago.] It broke my heart that it had gotten so big and this spring half of it didn’t leaf out with three upper trunks dead out of six or more tall white trunks. 

         My birch, as I lovingly called it was the focal point of my patio garden at the back of the house with its vase-shaped canopy of small soft green leaves that gave me dappled shade for many years.

         Yes, birch trees can be messy with black limbs often shearing off when they get too old or when the winds were brutal, but it always was a picture perfect setting for my red cardinals.

         That is why I planted it; I wanted a living Christmas card out my back kitchen slider where my white birch filled with red cardinals.  Often when friends marveled at my gorgeous red cardinals, I would say, “There are usually seven or more, let’s count them.” I was rewarded in that instant for many years due to my husband putting out quality sunflower seeds faithfully. 

         We built this house and it was an undulating open field and I had to stomp my foot and toss my auburn hair when it came to the contractors who wanted to carve my undulating swales into complete flatness.  I knew their ulterior motive was to scoop up as much top soil as possible and haul it off for their financial gain.

         I adamantly said “No, you can only level what is needed for the foundation and the drive way.  The rest will stay natural.”  I could tell at that moment when the contractor’s smile evaporated from his face it was going to be a tussle – my will over his will.

         Delightfully, I triumphed.  Many times, I have shown my gardens and land to those gardeners interested in the ‘full tour’ and they admire the swales that ripple from East to West across the acreage.

         It is not often a person plants a tree and then has to cut it down because it has gotten too big and too dangerous.  The first two years we had drought – awful drought. [An aside, I was once dropped off at my home by a friend and her teenage son quipped about our front lawn – “Going in for the desert look I see.” 

         Talk about optimism.  I ordered a white birch, ended up with three bare root sticks about 18 inches in length, completely leafless.  I paced off ten feet from the corner of the patio and dug a hole in the red clay, amended it and planted them about three feet apart in a triangle. 

         At first, I merely parked our new red wheel barrow beside it to be certain that my husband didn’t run them down mowing the straggly tuffs of grass that were trying to be a lawn. A few months later, I parked 5-gallon buckets near it to mark its home.

         My husband laughed at my three sticks.  Me, I was filled with optimism; I could picture it in 5 years giving me dappled shade. 

         Those first few years, my husband was a good sport carrying 5-gallon buckets of water to the alee of Bradford pears while I watered the willows and the river birch along the top swale, my white birch at the patio and the maples and the magnolia trees in the yard.  I still think a 5-gallon buck of water is extremely heavy, but as Dad used to say, “It builds character.”

         Well, let’s talk about that character . . . this year, one of our more blustery March winds knocked one of the dead trunks down toward the house and the tip of it bounced off the side of the house. As Murphy’s Law would have it, it fell against the back of the house, kitchen wall, where my prized skylights reside.

         I cleaned up the mess. We had to cut two of the pieces of trunk to get it into the bed of the pickup, and then added all the dead branches.  It knackered two of my aberatives – OUCH – they now look like they have bite marks in their tops from the crashing down birch.  I wonder if they will ever fill out again.

         It takes character to know when a tree has to come down for the safety of your house, not just a couple of limbs, but the whole once beautiful tree.

         We were in the middle of having the roof fixed, new skylights put in, and I immediately called my trusty tree man, Rodney.

         Great fellow, always talks with a warm smile and lilt in his voice.  Never misses a chance to compliment some garden feature and has what looks like red hair, once upon a time.

         “I’ll need the bucket truck for this . . . ,” he was looking at the logistics of it all, letting his voice trail off.  He knew the roofers, they knew him and they talked about other jobs they were both working on.

         Small town friendly, was my thought.

         “You can’t have your men walk all over my beautiful perennials . . .” I lamented.

         “We will be real careful, what else you need done while we are at it?”

         He knew me, he knew we had aging trees and we walked the property and I pointed out the elm overhanging the shed, and the big oak limb down back that we couldn’t lift.

         “I’ll put you on the list and be back.”

         “Try not to do it when the ground is soft from rain . . .” I called to him as he departed.

         The morning I went to the bank to transfer money for the roofer, I returned to my yard where three trucks were.  I came in the front door and my husband said, “Tree guy is here.”

         I immediately walked to the kitchen slider and saw that they had ropes around my beautiful white birch – still beautiful even though it was half-dead.

         I was about to walk out that door and thought better of it – his man was at the base with the chain saw running and I didn’t want to be under limbs if it went awry. The ropes from the upper reaches of the trunk were pulled taunt and the opposite ends tethered to a bobcat, bucket held up in the air on the far side of the lawn.

         I quickly skipped out the front door and just as I was coming around the corner of the house I heard it starting to go, only to witness the final SWOOSH-SWISH of the upper limbs kissing the lawn in my back yard.  All equipment sounds stopped and his men moved into action quietly to get the chipper truck into position in the back yard.

         Rodney came to greet me with a big smile on his face.

         “I was worried about catching your shed, but we done good,” he beamed.

         I was in complete awe at the breadth and length of my beloved downed white birch.

         It was close, but the breath of spring bush wasn’t damaged and two limbs of the Gingko tree limbs bounded back safely once his fellas started cutting my tree it into moveable pieces to feed into a thunderous chipper.

         I wanted to cry, so I fetched my cell phone to take pictures and my sunglasses to hide my tears.