[Ooper]

First off, you don't "need" to trim your trees, contrary to what most people say. It's basically personal choice. You never see The Villages trimming any of their 1,000's of trees. The dead fronds will just fall off naturally in the wind. As far as taking one down, very easy. We had one taken down after 12 years because it developed a case of trunk rot at the base of the tree. Because of the size and shape of their root ball, all that was needed was to dig around the base of the tree and the root ball a bit and a long rope to the top of the trunk was used and just pulled down. No stump to remove. The tree was just cut into manageable pieces and carted away. Took about 1 hr.