Mountain Climb, Tree Removal and Discovery in Our Own Back Yard

A couple of years ago, we saw the foliage from the top of Wachusett Mountain and we have been meaning to go up there again. This week, we invited Briar along and visited the mountain. We had intended to drive up the mountain and climb the last quarter mile or so, The gate was closed because of some maintenance that was going on so we had to park at the Visitors Center near the base of the mountain and hike up. It was a beautiful day for a hike.

That's Boston in the distance.

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That's Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Briar, Gus and the kids climbed it a couple of weeks ago with the Cub Scouts.

When we had our house inspection, it was pointed out that we had a couple of dead branches that were potential threats to the house. On further inspection, we realized that we had 2 trees, an ash that had succumbed to beetles and a hickory that had been choked by a vine. We had them both cut down today.

This is the vine that strangled our hickory. It's twisted around a maple that it killed before jumping to the hickory.

They also did some cleanup in the neighboring hickory.

Taking the top off the ash.

TIMBER! The last bit of the hickory coming down.

Cleanup was still in progress but I shot this view of the finished product while there was still some light.

While all of this was going on with the trees, we discovered that we could finally get to our rear property line through the now leafless trees. We weren't surprised to learn that there is a stone wall on the line.

That's our house down through the trees from the back property line.

-JC-