Eastern Cottonwood

The eastern cottonwood in the backyard is being taken down today. She's massive, 80-90 ft tall and was planted by the original owner soon after the house was built in 1930. She's been dying for years, had swallowed a chain link fence long before we owned her and was struck by lightning twice.

She was closer to 100 feet tall, but a week after our roof was done, the top of her came off and hit the laundry room (just damaged the trim, thank goodness). That has been our fear for a while now - hitting our home or a neighbor's.

I'm crying because I love her for her history, for her home to birds and squirrels, etc., but I know she has to come down now before she gets worse and does real damage.

Sadly, we can only afford to take her down to about 20 ft. To take her to a stump would be more than it cost to re-roof our home. Sigh...