Twenty-five years ago someone planted an Ash tree by the front door. There's also a Tulip Tree and a Locust, plus a little further away a Pin Oak. All beautiful, huge trees. They defoliate over winter so the sun hits the house, then in summer provide dense cover and shade.

The Ash tree is more than 25 metres high. Or was.

Big Ash by the front door.

When we had the Lacebug outbreak two years ago, after they had finished with the olive trees they moved on to Ash, Paulownia and even Privet. Our Ash took an absolute beating and lost all of its foliage in a week. A month later it had started to recover and put out new growth, then autumn arrived and all those leaves dropped off. Since then we have had a long dry spell. Not quite a drought, but it was dry enough that it affected the Ash.

Last year it was poorly, and had half the foliage it normally has, mixed in with a lot of dead sticks, twigs and even full branches. It dropped a few dead branches. At the end of summer it suddenly sprouted a series of suckers (epicormic shoots) which got to three metres high, then they died overnight.

Some of the larger branches started to wilt, becoming more horizontal. I got one that hung over our driveway removed, and another one that wasn't particularly in the way, but looked bad...it had a huge crack on the upper edge of where it joined the tree.

I had an arborist look at it. Not healthy but it might come back, was the verdict

Then a few months back a very large branch snapped off and almost smashed the verandah we had just had renovated. It barely missed, and the shredded leaves from the top filled the guttering, it was that close.

And now its Spring. All the other Ash trees have started shooting out new leaves. But not this one. Not a leaf on it. Any twigs I snapped off were dry and dead, no new sap running through it.
So, much as I like big trees, it had to go. Too big a risk.

The arborist was here today. Using a cherry picker he worked from the edge in, lopping of small branches and dropping them neatly below, then working in to the trunk cutting big heavy logs.

He cut the logs into short lengths for our fireplace. Its good to burn when its properly dry. Not as good as redgum (or olive) logs, of course, but it works when its part of a mix of firewood.

Just need to stack it, split it, dry it.....

Ready for chipping
The smaller stuff went into the chipper, and I added to my mountain of woodchip. I do have a lot of woodchip, but I am using it. The vegie garden paths are weed-protected by laying a very deep woodchip bed. And I have a new technique for getting trees planted in mining spoil, which uses three 20 litre buckets of chip per sapling. I'd be a lot meaner with it if I was buying woodchip by the trailer-load, but when I have this much its easy to be generous with it's use.