Have you ever walked past a tree in your neighbourhood, one that you've walked past a hundred times without thought, only this time to wonder: what would this place be like without this one tree there?
The one tree I'm talking about is a few roads down from where I live, but I walk past it every morning to the train station. Its a large sycamore-y oak (I'm bad with trees) that towers over the houses there, caking their roads with its currently yellowing/browning leaves.
We've been having pretty drastic weather changes here, and I'm sure the house owner has thought once or twice about what would happen if the tree fell one night and smashed their newly redone roof.
The usual solution is to preemptively cut it down, and when that inevitably happens, this place will not be the same place again. The charm will just be gone.
On my walk into town there is a HUGE London Plane tree. I never really noticed it for years, then one day it was suddenly front of my consciousness. I followed the trunk up to the first branches about 2 storeys up, then followed the curve of the branches even higher. And they curved right over and got thinner and lower and thinner and lower until there were leaves at the end that I could touch from the ground. I was blown away by its magnificence. I can't help wondering what it has seen over the years.
it's true :( safety is important but if the tree has never caused any issues then it should definitely be allowed to stay there. there's just something so sad about cutting down trees. however we've been having lots of storms lately and i've seen trees be split in half from them... it can be scary. regardless i still feel bad. wouldn't it be better just to trim them than to remove them entirely?