Hackberry trees

Kate and Joy have told me that hackberry trees are trash trees.  I wish somebody had told my neighbors--not Jan but the ones on the corner. 

That house is a rental house falling apart at the seams.  One huge hackberry is literally pressing into the roof.  For weeks I've been calling and telling authorities about it and they all said, "There's nothing we can do."  I finally located the owner and he refused to do anything. 

There are three hackberries in a row.  In the last week, two of them have big branches on my roof.  When the arborist recommended by a friend came over today, he showed me how one broken tree is the only thing keeping the other from crashing into my roof.  It's a two day job requiring a tree climber and lots of rope and possibly a crane.

Hackberries may be trash but when they reach the size of a pecan tree, which all three of these have, it's expensive to carry off that trash.  If you have any baby hackberries, cut them down while they're little. 

They grow huge, but unlike their cousins, the ash, they are very brittle--an arborist's nightmare.