Sad farewell

When I moved in this silver birch stood in my garden with not much around it, tall and only slightly leaning, time has bent it and other things have grown round it. The tree has been stressed for a few years, and nothing we tried seemed to help. By now this should be a dense leaf cover and moving in the breeze, but the leaves are all from the trunk and the branches are dead. I plan to get another birch for the spring and we will bring down this old one in July. I have been working out it age and it must be at least 30! I have been in the house since 92, and it was a good sized tree then.