Two in fact, and very old ones. Norwegian Maples. We had to cut them down almost entirely, since they were dead due to some incompetent cut-back about six years ago. Both trees got severely shortened then before midsummer, which is the worst time period to cut any tree, but especially this species since they just bleed and then dry out beyond rescue.

During the last two years big pieces of bark fell onto the road and we got worried about people potentially getting hurt. However, this time we wanted to cut them down the proper way and seeked advice. That we found with Curtis Bellows, an Arborist in Nora, not far away from Grythyttan.

He offered to come round and take a look at the trees, and then we agreed that he would do the job. Curtis is by the way a Canadian, and isn’t it ironic that he had to take down two maples, thinking of the maple leaf being part of the Canadian flag? On the other hand, as one could read in the Wikipedia article I linked to, this type of maples is kind of invasive in Northern America, so maybe doing this job contained also a bit of satisfaction…

It took Curtis the entire day, he started at 9am and he was still helping with cutting the wood into smaller pieces at 4.30pm, when it was almost dark…

We did help by securing the roads, so that no car got one of the big chunks of wood on top. When these huge chunks fell it made the ground vibrate, one could also feel that in the house even…

The following day we continued making a nice little pile of the still huge chunks of wood. We were definitely the attraction of these two days, with people sometimes passing several times that way, with or without dog as an excuse, looking at the work and the result in awe.

Nobody was really sad to see these trees go, and we learnt that they had been discussed for quite some time in the village because of their condition and the falling bark. Everyone was like “That’ll be a lot of wood for the fireplace”.

We were also extremely glad to get this job done, and thanks to the family within two full days of “Garden Gym” as we called it, due to the physical workout it involved. It felt really like one stone fell off with every chunk that came down.

Both trees were left at still a decent height to keep them as a part of the ecosystem. We had for example two bird couples breeding on the shorter one of them. So we kept their summer homes and hope that they will return next springtime!

Here some impressions of the job done.

We would also like to recommend Curtis to anyone who needs a job like this done. He is not only highly knowledgeable with an experience of over 10 years in this business, but also real fun to work with. Over the day it seemed he almost became a family member and it was almost sad to see him rolling home to his own family after a whole day of hard work.

Thanks Curt! 🙂