Gorgeous tree! A developer is changing our local race track into housing and shops, and just took down 20+ mature shade trees lining a main street. Makes us mad. And in this township, we need a permit to remove any tree, died or alive. Wonder whose palm got greased.

You see it all the time. It takes generations to grow a copper beech, but moments to kill one. If they don't actually cut them down they run heavy equiptment over the roots or pile up soil. At all comes out the same. No doubt the new owners will plant a couple of popular junk trees. It's too bad, like losing an old friend.

Hello
This is the heartbreak of New Jersey. When I was a kid the area around Edison was farms. There was an operating farm in Bonhamtown (near Metuchen) when my husband was in Junior High. The family that had that farm went back to the American Revolution. I think they want to blacktop most of the state and fill the gaps with townhouses and as you most aptly called them "McMansions". I love New Jersey--lived here all my life--but the almighty dollar seems to trump everything here. Virginia is looking better and better (and it's also Zone 6).
Pat

"...A developer is changing our local race track into housing and shops, and just took down 20+ mature shade trees lining a main street..."

You mean in Cherry Hill? That is just awful. And on Haddonfield Road the old brick walls, the large iron entry gates, large trees. They just tore everything down.

Joolz, it was a beautiful tree and as you pointed out, so healthy.

I live in South Jersey and they are doing the same down here. Building houses everywhere and blacktopping every empty spot, then they want to complain when deer are in yards and on the roads. What do they expect, they haven't left them anywhere else. Sorry for the rant, it makes me mad to see mature trees cut down and wildlife displaced to make room for mcmansions and townhouses.

I couldn't stand it so I went back through my old picture files and found some more from when the tree was still standing to "end" the page with. I miss her.

Thanks, everyone, for your support. Mutual tears are easier for the soul.
--Joolz

DON'T get me started on "mcmansions" New Jersey is infested with them isn't she?

I'm all misty eyed over this magnificent tree, as I look at our our beech trees often with all its' carvings of the past....the same feeling I recalled as I watched my neighbors'former home being set afire by the fire department for 'practice' one night, then bright & early the next morning, seeing it ruthlessly chewed away by a man & his demolition machine ~ the entire structure was demolished within an hour as if it was nothing, just garbage to load into a dumpster. Someone's former home - who's past meant nothing, and now, no hope for the present. No future exists, for none of the new owners will put down deep roots. In place of the former cape cod sitting within its modest wooded lot now stands an oversized plastic cookie cutter colonial (you know the one - with the twin bumped-out front LR & DR bay windows & the oversized half round foyer window for the chandelier) towering on it's new high mound of 100 weedy blades of front 'lawn'. this town has no respect for its' past, nor its' future, as those of us remaining have to deal with all aspects of its' very vast repercussions. Houses are coming down like dominoes here- a constant regurtitation on every street you're on- a fresh one down, or 2-3 new ones on the same lot where there once was 1. The sprawl in N.J. must end!