Trimming Main Street’s Venerable Trees

Twenty feet overhead, the sugar maple limbs shook. Eyes shielded behind rough, saw-dusted hands, Paul Hubina looked up toward a scuffed white bucket where Alan Potter leaned out over its edge. He reached with a long-handled pruner to sink its serrated edge into another branch jutting from the old tree.

Fluttering to the sidewalk along Main Street Tuesday were leaves and twigs that Mr Hubina raked from the lawn. Joel Flanders hauled another heavier branch toward a wood chipper parked at the curb.

“We’re trimming all the maples along Main,” Mr Hubina said. He and coworkers from Newtown Arbor Service have done work along Main Street in past days. He pointed across the street to the C.H. Booth Library where one mature tree was missing some of its lower limbs. They had done trim and maintenance ten years ago, he said, “And, we’re back to do it again.”

The crew is making sure that any diseased limbs or overgrowth are cleared away. “It’s safer for the walkers,” Mr Hubina said, which includes members of his own family. “You get a lot of traffic. The sidewalks are used quite a bit.”

Bright orange cones and sidewalk signs alerted traffic and passersby that from up above they might hear the snap and crackle of dried twigs, or the sound of a leafy cluster rushing to the ground.