Tree BDSM

Dear Sensitive Readers, you may wish to avert your eyes because this is a pretty ugly image. Basically the rule is simple: chains and trees do not go together.  Chains tend to do bad things for trees and they never do anything good.  This demonstrates something very stupid. This chain could never keep this tree from splitting.  A major limb of a decent sized tree is simply too heavy for a chain even one as robust as this.  Second, this chain was applied way to close to the fulcrum to apply any meaningful force.  So placing this chain thus is utter futility and it should have been removed a decade or more ago, and now its removal will further damage the tree leaving a weak zone in exactly the wrong place. The initial mistake was made decades earlier; the tree was planted too close to the house. Now the placement is a problem.  Pay attention to the little tags when planting that tell you how big the tree gets in 10 years, then plant accordingly.  Next pruning of this tree was neglected so is limbs grew wrongly.  Up the street a young limber pine and a small thread-branched false cypress were both planted as foundation landscaping around a rehabbed house.  At present both look fine, but they will grow and both will outgrow their locations in 5 to 10 years so much they will need to be cut down. This is pure bad landscaping. It was done for street appeal and quick sale, and most people would not notice.  TPP is not most people, yet TPP has a Chamaecyparis that is over growing his front steps because even though planted with a reasonable amount of room, it quickly grew to a very large size and they are hard to prune and nearly impossible to keep small. So, yes even us knowledgeable people make mistakes, and this shrub will be removed this summer for stoop renovations. The take home messages: 1. no chains in trees, 2. pay attention to where you plant your trees, 3. not all landscape professionals can be trusted to do the right thing for the long haul.

April brings rotten weather

  Something about April, maybe the pushing and shoving of fronts from the north and south but so far April's weather has been rotten.  The previous two days have been two of the windiest consecutive days in recent memory.  Gusts of wind over 40 mph were common, and at times gusts over 50 mph would occur, and you began watching your trees flex.  Since the area already had an ice storm, a lot of weak limbs had already been pruned by nature, not a lot more came down in spite of the violent weather. A large basswood (above) whose base had been damaged a few years earlier by sewer work finally collapsed onto the front lawns, porches, and a driveway of the neighbors across the street. It took a city crew the rest of the day to clean up the debris, and no major damage was done, except that is the 4th major street tree to go from just a 4 house portion of our block.  Replacements will take years to have the same tree-lined street impact if they ever do. Everything loose blew every where.  Two small pot cover tepees TPP set up to cover and protect  broccoli seedlings ended up in the neighbor's gold fish pond, but no damage.  Everything that was in flower got wind whipped pretty badly, so now as that transition weather has passed, a low in the 20s is predicted tonight, and it it ruins the flowering of my Magnolia liliflora, it would be very sad indeed. Yesterday's high was in the low 70s showing how changeable the weather can be this time of year.

Ice is nice, and will suffice

This scene is enough to make you cry for a coniferous forest.  Here's a forest scene from Durham, NC, after a 2-day ice storm in early March this year.  Ouch!  It hurts just to look at this. Any tree that didn't get ripped limb by limb is bent in half.  Any time you want to complain about snow, just be thankful you're not a woody plant and it isn't ice. Of course, this might not seem so tragic if TPP hadn't spent most of the afternoon dragging winter fall branches from around the estate out to the street, and there's still a lot more to do even though the pile of limbs is quite impressive already. 

A thaw reveals bad bun-buns

Officially this is the snowiest (already), and perhaps the coldest winter on record for this area, and it's only Feb 19th.  Of course this week's thaw could kill the coldest winter record, but the thaw is much appreciated if only for the contrast. Unfortunately, the melting snow has revealed that a bun-bun managed to get around/through a fencing barrier and girdled a small ornamental hemlock, as if TPP didn't have enough difficulty with this species of tree anyways. As the melt continues, it's certain that more feeding damage will be discovered.  Oh well, nothing to do but start shopping for a replacement.

Nor'easter brings snow & tree damage

Nor'easters are storms that track NE in the northeastern US, basically up the coast from New Jersey to Maine, and they can dump a lot of rain or snow depending on the season. This storm ran into some cold imported Canadian air and as a result some places got 10-15 inches (25-38 cm) of snow, and this early in the season means it was a heavy wet snow. That's all you need to know to predict what happened. A lot of trees, many still bearing their leaves, will break under the weight, which in turn brings down power lines and probably 500,000 residences will be without electricity. A few years ago, an early heavy snowstorm struck our area, and those trees that had stubbornly hung onto their leaves were toast. It basically was the end for Bradford pears in this area; a walking survey of the neighborhood found 9 out of every 10 broken into smithereens. The Phactor lost a very large old redbud split to the base and another 6 were badly damaged. Never much cared for Bradford pears, and we still had 12 or so redbuds undamaged, so no tragedies. At our residence in an urban heat island there has yet to be a frost so the fall colors and leaves are still hanging on. Such a snow here, now, would be a disaster too. Videos of cars sliding around will be standard fare as dopes behind the wheel make their annual discovery that snow is slippery and requires caution. Any live reports from the field?