No stars. The jobs instead.

Dead pecan standing six feet from a bedroom wall.

No room to fell and no crane access down the side return, so the tree came down in rigged sections lowered on a friction device. The climber walked the homeowner through the rigging plan from the ground before going up, which is standard: anyone whose house is under the drop zone is entitled to understand it.

Close quarters is a rigging problem, not a felling problem.

Homeowner had two quotes to top the tree.

Topping was declined and the reason explained: the flush of weak regrowth it triggers is far more likely to fail than the limb being removed, and the decay pockets left behind never close. The tree was reduced to suitable lateral branches instead, taking roughly 15% of the live crown.

A company that offers to top your tree is telling you something.

Three live oaks thinning from the top down.

Pattern and veinal necrosis matched oak wilt. A trench was cut to sever the root grafts running toward the healthy stems, and the two unaffected trees were injected. The infected tree was removed outside beetle season and the wood was not kept on site.

Roughly 90% of local spread is underground. Trenching is the treatment.

11pm, limb through a carport roof.

A crew reached the address inside two hours. The limb was cut back to a stable point and the drive cleared overnight so the household could get out in the morning. The rest of the tree was reassessed in daylight rather than in the dark, which is the correct order.

Overnight work makes the hazard safe. Diagnosis waits for light.

Four acres of dense Ashe juniper.

The lot was walked first and every oak worth keeping was flagged before a machine moved. Mulching cleared the juniper and opened the ground layer without hauling loads of green waste off a hill country lot that could use the mulch.

Clearing is a selection job. Flag what stays before you start.

A written report was needed for a permit application.

Site inspection, measurements, photographs and a documented risk assessment, formatted for the reviewer who had to read it. The report did not recommend removal, because the inspection did not support removal.

A consulting report you cannot argue with is worth more than a cheap one.

Stump left behind by another contractor, ground flush.

Flush is not finished. It was reground well below grade, the chip spoil was removed rather than raked back into the hole, and the void was backfilled with topsoil so sod could go straight over it.

Ask how deep, and ask what fills the hole afterwards.

Split co-dominant oak, previously quoted for removal.

The union had included bark but no significant decay below it, which makes it a candidate for support rather than removal. A cable system was specified to ANSI A300 Part 3 for the actual geometry of the tree, with a re-inspection interval agreed in writing.

Cabling reduces likelihood of failure. It does not eliminate it.

Six young trees, subdivision planting, never pruned.

Structural pruning on trees this age is small cuts with long consequences: remove the competing leader now and the tree carries its own weight for the next fifty years. The crew arrived about an hour outside the window and the office called ahead rather than letting it pass unremarked.

The cheapest structural work you will ever buy is on a young tree.

Board wanted to stop reacting to tree failures.

Every tree on the common areas was inventoried with condition notes and mapped, then sorted into a three-year programme by priority. The board now has a document that shows what it knew and what it did about it, which is the question asked after any failure.

An inventory is a liability record as much as a maintenance plan.