Maybe it is time to let her go and replace her with a quality hardwood tree that you won't have to worry will fall on your house during a severe storm and damage it and possibly hurt you all. I know that's not the answer you're looking for, but I'm just trying to look at it objectively as someone who is not emotionally invested in the tree. Between our severe thunderstorm/tornatic weather and winter ice storms, once a tree is as sick as that elm, it really becomes a huge hazard.....an accident waiting to happen.

We had a lot of huge elm trees of all kinds in our woodland when we bought this land in 1997. We did not leave any of them standing in the part of the woodland that is directly adjacent to the house because we didn't want for them to fall on the house after it was built. Now, many of the elms that were once dominant in the woodland are lying on the forest floor, rotting away. As each one sickened, weakened and crashed to the forest floor (while fully leafed out, of course) over time, I did mourn the loss of a once gigantic and grand shade tree. At the same time, though, I knew it is the nature of things that weaker wooded trees like elms die sooner rather than later and that the then smaller oak trees growing beneath them would grow and fill the void in the woodland, which they have.

Trees tend to die from the inside out, so that a tree that still leafs out and looks surprisingly good may be dying slowly over time on the inside. Look at your tree. Look at the rotten area to the left of the area which y'all just cut off. I would bet there is rot on the inside underneath that sick looking bark. Having rot that low in the tree when the tree is in your yard and is tall enough to fall on the house is a really bad thing, and you cannot stop the rot once it begins.

Only a certified arborist could look at the tree and assess its health properly and tell you if it is worth saving, but just from looking at its outward appearance, I wouldn't want that tree near my house or near the yard where my children play.

I was just looking at our largest dead elm tree lying on the forest floor yesterday. It is near where Chris is building his house and I am glad it came down before he chose that home site. That tree came down limb by limb over time before it finally rotted enough in the center that the whole thing just toppled during a storm. Now, it lies there on the ground looking like a big pipe----so much of the trunk is hollowed out from rot that your kids could probably run through it like it is a tunnel. It is scary to think of having a tree that rotten in the middle still standing and 60-70' tall. It's only been a couple of years since it fell, but it lost limbs for 10 or 12 or more years before that. Had it been close to the house, we would have taken it out ourselves. The hard thing about removing a dying tree in a dense woodland is that if you try to cut it down, it often falls only so far and then leans against the nearest tall tree, leaving a hazardous situation. This particular tree didn't have that problem. When it crashed to the ground, it was so large that it took down everything around it. I don't want that to happen to you, because in your case, the everything around it is structures, vehicles, people....not woodland trees and underbrush.

Is it hard to give up a large tree that is a landscape feature and that provides a lot of shade? Of course it is, but that tree is dying. Once a tree is dying ,it is better for you to be in control of when and how it comes down, and not vice versa.

Dawn

Oh boy.

I know. Someone, in their infinite wisdom, planted a cottonwood by the front door of our home in Ft. Worth. It was huge and towered over our house like the Jolly Green Giant. When we bought the house, we knew we'd have to take it down because it was unsound, had rot in the center, was dropping limbs.....and had lifted and cracked the sidewalk. One day, Tim and a friend took it down as carefully as possible, and they did it without dropping it on the house, any neighbor's homes or any cars. It was such a relief to get rid of it. Still, we really missed the shade and the trees we planted in our front yard (much farther away from the house) were not big shade monsters like it was. I missed the shade, but not the tree itself as it was just waiting to collapse on our house. A few years later, our next door neighbors faced the same situation, and the idiot they hired to take out their rotten cottonwood tree dropped it on our house. I didn't even kill anyone, but I wanted to.

About 3 or 4 years ago, we changed insurance companies after the one we'd had for 30 years really jacked up our rates. The new company had great rates but was unhappy with how close some of our trees were to our house. They almost wouldn't insure us because of those trees. (It wasn't too long after those big central OK ice storms caused so much expensive damage and destruction.) To make them happy, we took out the 8 or 10 trees closest to the house, but we still have plenty of shade overall, and it probably is better not to have trees as close to the house as some of those were. However, we almost exclusively have planted oaks in our front and back yards, so they are very sound hardwoods and should be long-lived and, hopefully, won't fall on our house. I think the insurance company, when they look at the trees around your house, should consider whether they are looking at good-quality hardwoods or trashy softwoods, but to them, it appears all trees are considered a risk.

I just think that when a tree clearly has rot, you're better off to get rid of it at a time of your choosing, instead of waking up in the middle of a night-time thunderstorm to find all of you trapped in your beds by a gigantic tree that has crashed down onto the house. That would be horrifying, and possibly deadly.

Some people will cable trees to support weak branches or pour concrete into a rotted area. All that concrete does is trap moisture indoors and lead to more rot while giving you a false sense of security......and if the tree falls on you, so will the concrete used to seal a rot cavity.

Better safe than sorry!

Dawn

We had 3 elms at our house in Tulsa. House is rented now. One elm still stands 30+ years later, one we had removed this year...for $1500 and one fell unexpectedly in winter, with no wind. We had NO CLUE anything was wrong with it. Fortunately it fell away from the house and the neighbor wasn't home, but it could have hit his vehicle or kids playing.

I have a big 'stump' planter from a tree that fell into our street. It was a large tree and just fell one day while one of our neighbors was looking out of his window. We notified the owner and he came to cut it into pieces and moved it out of the road. The piece that I have is totally hollow with only about 3 inches of wood and bark. The inside looked like completed compost except the color was not black, but kind of red. In fact, I took several wheelbarrows of it straight to my garden.

We have lived here since 2001 and have seen numerous trees fall. We lost one in an EF 1 tornado. It split in half, and half of it fell into our side yard not hitting anything except open ground. A few hours later the other half fell onto our house. It was still attached and as they began to take off limbs, it had enough spring to lift itself back up making it easier to remove. It caused a little dent in our metal roof, but didn't go through it. We weren't home when the second half came down, but I think it must have come down slowly. The neighbors behind us lost a big tree once, and the neighbor beside us had one fall across my entire garden area. It was not during the gardening season, so little harm was done. Trees grow huge here, but don't have to go deep for moisture so it seems their root systems are not strong enough to hold them up. I was in Utah on a business trip and Al called me to let me know that a tree had fallen through the house across the street. Al had been standing in the street talking to our neighbor who was on a golf cart. They could feel wind and see rain coming toward them across the lake so they each headed for their houses. The neighbor had to put his golf cart in the shop building so was a little slower getting into the house. Al was already in our doorway and heard the tree go down. He took off on a mad run to find a tree limb sticking into our neighbors favorite chair but the neighbor was still standing in his doorway. The fact that it took him a few extra minutes to put the golf cart under cover likely saved his life. None of those pulled the roots out of the ground, but the neighbor to the south had one just ripped up out of the ground.

My plan for next winter is to visit that big, dead, hollow elm trunk lying there in the woods and shovel out and collect all the compost I can get from it. I meant to do it this past winter, but then it seemed like it rained every day in fall and winter and the weather never got cold enough long enough for me to venture into the woods. When snakes are out in January, you cannot go into a snake-infested woodland even if it is winter. I would only collect compost from a downed tree trunk in very cold weather because of my fear that snakes might be hibernating in there.

In our early years here I spent a lot of time cleaning up the woods, removing decades of accumulated poison ivy and greenbrier and such. But, at the same time, I also was scooping up decomposing tree trunks, which often were almost totally compost when I found them. I could take a compost scoop and just scoop it up into a bucket or into the wheelbarrow and would take it straight to the garden and pour it right on top of a bed. That woodland compost had a great deal to do with how quickly our red clay soil turned into brown loamy soil. I haven't done that in years though, partly because our soil is so much better now and partly because I know the woodland renews itself in this way so I just don't want to interfere overly much in that process.

Trees are deceptive at times. They tend to die from the inside out and often the first and only clue is when they fall down. It can happen even when there is no wind, and that is scary. I don't like having softwood trees near a house or other structure for just that reason. You don't want your first clue that a tree is unsound to be that it falls on your house....or car....or pets....or family members.

Because our 10 acres of woodland have been left largely alone and allowed to just do their own thing, they are too crowded and have a lot of old trees that lose limbs in storms. Our neighbor's woodland is the same way. The other day, I heard a tree come down in the neighbor's woodland. Not ten minutes later, I heard one crash down in our woodland. Was it windy? Maybe a little. Maybe the wind was blowing 8-10 mph. That wouldn't bring down a tree that had any health and life left in it, but a tree that is somehow miraculously standing though rotted throughout the core? Oh yes, they'll fall in no wind at all. After hearing both trees crash down, I was just relieved they were deep inside a woodland where no people were. Sometimes I worry that a tree will crash down onto my garden (hopefully not while I am in it) since the woodland sits right north of the garden just a few feet away, but the trees in that part of the woods are oaks because we've take out the softwoods or they came down on their own before we bought the place.