We Cut Down a Big Tree - Why I'm Glad and Why I'm Sad

There are very few things I love more than mature trees. Like, maybe only sleep, eating, and TV watching rank higher. My husband probably ranks below mature trees, and I’m sure he’s okay with that. Trees are the best and I love them and want everyone to plant at least 5 trees per person, right now. But - I cut one down. I’m sad about the loss, but glad about the future. I’m a bag of mixed emotions.

First, let’s talk about our backyard.

photo from before we moved in

She was never much of a looker, she’s not huge, and she doesn’t overlook a sweeping vista. She’s roughly 25’x30’ which is a pretty average backyard for my neighborhood. There’s a giant 8’x11’ hot tub that we don’t use plopped in the middle, a raised deck that only makes the yard feel smaller because it doesn’t go to the edges, and a 6’x6’ shed that’s falling off the side of the garage. Oh, and a giant pepper tree.

We did make the backyard prettier a couple of years back when we remodeled the master bedroom and extended our “master suite” into the outdoors with a cute backyard seating area and some fresh paint on the hot tub. When we first moved in we also had our utility company cut down two giant palm trees for free. Side note: I love trees, but hate palms. More on that in this post. Other than cleaning it up and adding a few accessories, that’s about it! (Shop the backyard here)

The big pepper tree was nice in that it was big, green, loved by the local bees, and provided shade. But it dropped leaves and gunk all year long. I had to sweep every other day to keep the deck looking like the house wasn’t abandoned. We didn’t want to eat underneath it, do house projects underneath it, plant underneath it, or store any outdoor stuff underneath it. We basically avoided the half of the yard underneath the canopy.

The tree also straddled our neighbor’s house, so he was constantly trimming his side of the tree back to keep it from making a mess and to keep it from shading his solar panels. Last year, his gardeners got overzealous and the tree was basically cut in half. The whole thing then started to lean towards our house and deck in an unfavorable way. With the big holes in the canopy, we lost the privacy wall, and it just overall became more of a burden for our daily sweeps and our neighbor’s semi-annual pruning.

To top it all off, the pepper tree is invasive. This variety is LOATHED by gardeners in San Diego. I once asked a Facebook garden group advice on feeding my tree to prevent it from dropping so much gunk throughout the year and I had no less than 50 people yelling at me to cut it down. These trees are notorious for being jerks. Their roots can grow for blocks and mess up plumbing even as far away as the houses on the end of the block. They reproduce from their roots so they sprout up mini trees all over the place. Arborists joke that these trees will be here after an apocalypse. All in all, it’s not the greatest tree.

Once I came to terms with the idea that it isn’t the best flora, I realized that once the tree is gone, it opens up so many more opportunities for us to enjoy our backyard! By removing the tree, we now have the chance to add more trees! More trees that benefit the world by creating bee-loving pollen, produce food, and provide shade. Also, without all the shade, we can plant veggie beds and grow our own food. GOALS!

This is a very very rough plan, but it gives you an idea of how we can make our yard into a lush landscape that does wonders. We’ll have healthy soil to sequester carbon, trees to provide oxygen and refuge for animals, veggie beds for our own food, pollinator-loving plants, and a rain water capturing cistern to prevent erosion and irrigate our eco-system (plus grey water!). I really can’t wait!

This plan is likely not going to happen before 2021, but we’re brainstorming and planning for it by prepping the soil. Cutting down the big pepper tree is the first step in getting our landscape in shape. It may take years for the pepper tree roots to die back enough that we can plant our trees. So, a head start is a good start.

I got a bid to cut the tree down for $1,000 which pained me so. I started planning to cut it myself and worked for a few weeks picking off the bottom branches. I looked into buying one of these chainsaws on a pole until my landscaper bud caught wind and said he’d cut it all down for $250 including the trunk which there’s no way I could cut through with that little pole saw. DEAL!

He would have charged me to haul the greenery away to the greenery recycling that turns it into mulch. But being the cheapskate stubborn person that I am, I knew I could successfully break it down myself and save a few hundred bucks. Plus, I wanted to try to give the tree a second life by giving the big branch cuttings to local woodturners to make them into bowls, and the trunk into someone that could make it into a slab table or something. Check out this great San Diego company that “diverts woody biomass from landfills by milling fallen trees into lumber and reinvesting it back into our communities.” Isn’t that grand!?

So, we had my pal Celio cut down the tree and then he left me all of the rubbish.

And I mean ALL of the rubbish.

There was a 20’x20’ pile about 5’ tall! I knew it was a big tree, but it felt like a big undertaking seeing it all sitting on the deck. But I was determined to recycle it myself. I spent a few hours with my trusty AirPods and my favorite podcasts trimming the branches down into small pieces to fit into my greenery bins. I only have about 4 trash cans so I asked my Buy Nothing Group to borrow some and a neighbor let me grab 8 of her bins to use.

I filled the bins pretty quickly and had to wait two weeks for the greenery recycling truck to come pick them up, but then as soon as they did, I spent a couple of afternoons cutting and binning them. Slowly but surely, I cleared the deck off! It took about 20 of those trash cans and probably 10 hours of work but I did it.

I left the big pieces behind to give to people that could repurpose the wood by turning it into bowls or slabs. However, for a variety of reasons, I wasn’t able to give the trunk away and see it turn into a table. It just didn’t work out with the contacts I had. So, I went to Craigslist and listed them for free and people came to grab them. Lots of people came to scoop them up - including my sister! She was looking for firewood on Craigslist and saw my listing and knew it looked familiar so she texted, “are you selling wood on Craigslist?” Suspiciously, I said “….yes?” and then whaddya know she needed wood and I had wood. So she came over to grab some branches. What a weird small world. How she didn’t already know that I had a bunch of firewood sitting on my deck is beyond me and maybe a lesson in communicating more with my sister.

So anyway, all that to say, the tree is gone! And I don’t miss is as much as I thought I would. There’s another big tree a few houses down that we see in the distance to give us some greenery to admire. The clean blank slate is kind of thrilling for now. Once we finish the kitchen and bathroom remodel, we’ll be able to focus on the backyard makeover. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.