We had a blockage at one point and pulled out tree roots when cleaning. The maple was only feet from the sewer line and it is a old house, so it is not surprising. The new tree will be planted further away from the pipe. I think the other trees on my street are lindens, but I'm so bad at identifying trees. From the bark, it looks like lindens from the pictures I looked at online. Also, I don't jump over these trees, but don't frown either if that makes sense. It isn't an issue the city is offering a tree and I'm happy they ripped out the maple (it scared me with constantly falling large limbs). I'm just going to use the tree as the base for designing the front yard and don't want to find out I based my plan off a horrible tree. Hope that makes sense. I'm just a little confused as some sites classify the these trees as medium trees and others indicate large. Maybe they stay smaller when planted as street trees?

We took ours down yesterday and got everything in the storage containers. Now I have to get them up on the high shelf in the garage and get my furniture rearranged again in the living room. First I have to vacuum and it kills my back. It's too big a job for my Roomba. My living room's a mess. I have boxes of stuff for Habitat to pick up tomorrow. I'll sure be glad when it's gone. I like that room to be kept clean. I'll be glad to get back to normal.

slightly OT but still in the spirit of things: for over 20 years we lived in the converted carriage house of an 1886 Queen Anne brick house. The living room was on the second floor as it formerly was the hayloft, a huge room but awkward as it was roughly 25 feet long and 14 feet wide. There was a wonderful window (12 ft x 12ft) with an arched top in the middle of the long wall and the ceiling was 14 feet tall. It just begged for a truly enormous REAL Christmas tree, which we did for all those years. Now, mind you, I was in my 30s then, able to leap tall buildings -- well, at least able to climb my great-aunt's borrowed 12-ft ladder to hang ornaments on those 12-foot trees. The most difficult thing to do was to get the naked tree up the enclosed circular inside stairs from the driveway. It took three men to do that job, usually (tho there was the one year when we had the wrapped tree waiting to be hauled up and told our teenaged son to wait til we got home -- typically, he proved his manliness by ignoring us and hauling it up all by himself proudly. At 41 and the papa of four, he is now mostly more sensible, thankfully, lol). Our Christmas tree in those days took me well over a week to decorate. I am very fussy about my tree, and am the sole decorator. Nobody seemed to mind, tho one year time ran out before I had finished the backside and my DH has never let me forget it ("did you do the back?" he still says. Humph to him, says I). The tree stayed up til at least Twelfth Night and had to be cut into pieces at that point to be removed and thrown out the large window -- no way to get it back down those narrow circular stairs. One spring during outdoor burning season, we burned some yard debris including the old tree, and it was most sobering to see how extremely fast a dry Christmas tree went up in flames. Now that I am past the desire and ability to decorate gi-normous trees, and having lost my enthusiasm for vacuuming their needles well into July (how DO they manage to still be lurking??) we have long had artificial trees. I mostly miss the wonderful fragrance, but this way I can keep them up longer and enjoy what Ginny said -- the loveliness of lights and color at this bleak time of darkness. And I meant what i said in my previous post. Thanks to my new faux tree I am definitely going to cover it and leave it for next year. Why try to improve on near-perfection, hmmm? =) I'll stop now. Enough already! Thank you for your kind indulgence.

I used to put up my tree the first full weekend after my Mother's birthday (Dec 10), which is when the family did it. Mother is long gone, and for the last 5 years I hadn't done a tree at all. This year, though, I wanted the seasonal ambiance in my new home I'm now fully living in... so the tree went up before that weekend because I had company coming that weekend. The family (and I, when I went out on my own) took the tree down the first full weekend after New Years, unless that was just a couple days later. This year I am having company the first full weekend after New Years, so I will take it down during the week after they leave. Retired now, so I don't have to wait for a weekend.