Timber!

After the house was underway, we noticed that there was a nearby dead pine tree that had to come down and several other large pines that are too close for comfort.  Removing the dead tree was a no-brainer, but even live pines are fairly fragile and can break and fall on a house in high winds.  So vitually everyone here advises removing pine trees that could fall and hit your house.

We had been planning remove quite a few dead pines from out lot as well as several live ones on the lake side.  We had already lost several pines from a combination of drought, pine bark beetles and Hurricane Rita and had had the dead hulks removed.

Even though I think pines are pretty, they are an absolute pain to have in a yard.  The pine needles fall year round and have to be constantly raked and burned.  In addition, the needles are acidic, which kills grass directly under the tree.

The builder will do most of the removals, but he did not want to do the ones close to the house.  So we hired a guy who specializes in taking down trees near houses.  One of the trees, which was nearly 100 feet tall, had to be topped, leaving only a bare pole as shown in the nearby photo.  If you look closely, you will see the climber who donned a climbing belt and spikes and hauled a chain saw up the tree where he spent several hours lopping off all the limbs.  After that was complete, the sawyer used a chain and comealong to pull the tree away from the house while he sawed it down.