Farewall, Trees

Yesterday we had 17 trees taken down in our backyard (sob!). It was hard to see them go, but they were old and diseased and in danger of falling on the house. 16 of them were along the back property line, at the top of the hill. All Sweetgums, they were already mature when we bought our house 19 years ago.

The final tree was our dogwood next to the patio. We had cut out so much dead wood from it that it was seriously lopsided. And it really struggled to put out the leaves every spring.

Our neighbor also had a tree removed, a messy volunteer that hung over our fence and dropped debris in our yard spring, summer, and fall. We're relieved to have our gutters clean again.

Here are some before and after shots:
Before, the treeline along the fence is quite dense. The Sweetgum trees on our property have a backdrop of pines and native hardwoods growing on surrounding properties.

After. You can see the native trees have been thinned out considerably. All the remaining trees except one are on surrounding properties.
Before, showing our neighbor's tree hanging over our house, and our dogwood by the patio:
After:
You can also see that our neighbor's poplar was also trimmed (they "raised the canopy" on it).

We have three 6 ft red maple saplings awaiting their planting on the hill. We hope that soon they will fill in and recreate that wooded feeling we're missing already.