tell me about it.
Tomorrow, I'm going to work on felling the 3rd and 4th dead Silver Maple in my yard. All of them were 40 years old. The good news, I have plenty of low-btu firewood and a clean slate to plant some new trees (and it won't be silver maple).

That is "the good news"... I dropped a number of threatening trees over the past two years and have replaced them with a combination of Forest Pansy Redbuds, different Dogwoods, Hollies, Bloodgood Japanese Maples, and Magnolias...as well as some Serviceberries.

These trees should all maintain a reasonable size and offer a more diverse looking forest garden.

The only downside to the cleared areas of the wooded areas is that the sunnier areas have become a haven for ultra-power weeds such as poison ivy and all sorts of strong growing "what's that?" plants.

It's fun to consider the options for those newly opened areas.