Our city has a lot of laws about who can do what to which trees. The trees on the strip between the sidewalk and the street can only be pruned and/or removed with city permission, and most houses have at least one tree there. The city also makes property owners pay to keep the sidewalks even; they come through every neighborhood on a five year cycle and mark every square that is unacceptable so that the property owner knows what needs fixing. It was a huge concession from the city when they decided that some trees that were causing sidewalk problems could be removed, but the city decides on a case by case basis.

We have a mostly dead crabapple in our front yard. An arborist told us about ten years ago that it probably should have been yanked five or ten years before that. At this point, all of the limbs have fallen off, so I'm not sure why we haven't gotten rid of the trunk except that it's not threatening anything and that leaving it in place is a lot cheaper. And it still puts out leaves and blossoms and fruit, so it's not actually dead dead.

The trees in our backyard worry me because I don't think that lilacs and roses of Sharon normally get twenty feet tall. Even the forsythia bush is a lot taller than I'd expect it to be. The problem is money and time. Scott thinks he can take care of them, but he always has overtime when the weather's right. Also-- Twenty feet tall is not an amateur gardener thing.