The Mysterious Dying Pine

For over 25 years, Linda has had a nice pine tree in front of our house.  Sometimes raking up the pine cones was a pain, but she loved looking at it out the living room window.  In the snow, the branches were just beautiful.  Suddenly, in under a month, the tree just died!  Linda did some research and found out a bunch of reasons it could have happened.  Weed killer and fertilizer from the lawn can get in the roots and kill the tree if its put down to close to the trunk, there are beetles that cause pine wilt, a scientific sounding fungus and some other wormy creatures.  Once the tree gets a disease, it attracts ants which take up residents in the dead wood.  Guess what the guys found when they cut it down?  Yep, a bunch of ants. Coincidentally, the neighbor in the house you can see in the right of the photo just hated the tree when it was alive and was after Linda to get it cut down.  Maybe he poisoned it dead so she would have no choice but to remove it.

Not looking so healthy

Half way down....

And the tree is no more.

Linda is sure going to miss it this winter, but it's for the best that Bob and Tom cut it down.  If there would have been a heavy snowfall, it most probably would have fallen down on the house.