JoAnne Skelly: For the love of trees

I’m a tree hugger, both literally and figuratively. When I’m out hiking, my friends and I generally find at least one big tree to hug. We bought our house 36 years ago because I fell in love with the trees.

The owner prior to us had planted a prolific number of cottonwoods, pines and spruces. So many in fact, that all these years later, I’m caught in the horns of a dilemma. It’s time to remove some trees.

I never thought I would be able to have my beloved tree friends cut down in their prime. However, as I have aged along with them, I have become less of a romantic and more of a pragmatist. As my friend Kirk would say, “there’s a cost-benefit to tree removal.”

Many cottonwoods were planted in rows under the power lines. There is a definite cost to this in that their branches strike the power lines in the wind causing power outages. After our five-day outage last year, I decided to have some of them removed.

One benefit to the removal is that fewer trees means less power interference and less potential fire ignition, hopefully. Another benefit is that the power company removed them at no cost to us. They were thrilled to get them out and away from the transformer.

I was concerned that another cost to me would be the increased visibility of the neighbor’s yard. In actuality, removing the trees opened up some nice vistas and more sunrise/sunset views. Another plus. We are also optimistic that with the tree removal we will have fewer leaves to rake and less cotton to deal with.

I struggled with having a superfluous ash tree removed, because we had a long-time relationship, and it wasn’t under a power line or causing any harm. I let my pragmatic self loose on this one too. I knew there were too many trees in this one part of the yard and in addition to that, I had to hand-water this ash at least once a week.

After 30-plus years of dragging hoses and hand-watering, I’m trying to reduce my workload. The cost is my sad feeling about cutting down this perfectly adequate tree; the benefits are not only less work, but also another opened sunrise vista.

Another benefit turned out to be that the tree next to it is flourishing without the competition and is providing a haven for owls and hawks. One can actually have too many trees!

JoAnne Skelly is Associate Professor & Extension Educator Emerita at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. Email skellyj@unr.edu.