This December will make two full years since I bought this place.
Many things have changed, with much money spent. In all this time, both of the LARGE Oak trees in the front had dropped dead rotten limbs, for the most part with out any damage except for gouging holes in the yard, but once one fell onto the porch roof.
Looking up at this tree, knowing what the weather in Georgia USA can be like, I worried.
The tree above is the larger of the two, with several large living limbs and 2 dead ones extending towards the house.
So I bit the bullet and decided to be pre-emptive and have those limbs cut, with a healthy limb on the opposite side cut to balance.
Then the tree would be given a $500 treatment of salt and seaweed inserted into the soil around the drip edge.
Another dead tree out back was part of the deal, and I got the invoice.
So nervously walking around and looking up at the Oak, I began to obsess on the black rot and some spots I could see around the trunk.
Growing up as I did in South Georgia in the woods, I have seen and talked with others who work in trees, to know that almost all large old Oak trees are hollow near the base, and if they have that kind of black rot, it is a bad sign.
The spots in my personal experience were holes left weeping sap where an insect had laid an egg, the hatched, matured and ate its way out. You could stick your little finger in them.
So I switched tracks, and rather than doing the trim and possibly still have damage or later having to remove the tree, I decided to go ahead and remove this monster.
I just now got the above image of me standing on the stump.
I am rather heartbroken, as there was NO HOLLOWNESS, no disease that I could see.
Pruning would almost surely have been better. The price in the end was the same.
↑This is a short video (which I sped up more) just to show how tall the tree was↑
And so it began. There was an old telephone line to the house that had to be removed so the crane could get closer
So you see Gill (Rafael Flores) was in the bucket doing all the Saw work
I asked that some of the limbs that were not TOO terribly large be set aside in my driveway for firewood.
I hope to have a firepit before real cold weather gets here, and I have friends with fireplaces.
I ended up with this much firewood, just a FRACTION of the wood that went to the landfill
Here is another 'fast motion' video of some of the activity
I captured some of it from a completely different angle.
This is from the remote video cam mounted on the other tree
So even where there was clear damage in a large upper limb
There was no rot on the inside. 😢 I feel such a loss
When I think of the planks, wide boards, outdoor seating etc etc I could have gotten from that last HUGE trunk, my heart aches at the missed opportunity
"Death of a Tree"
by
Jerry E Smith
©09/16/2022
All images are original, taken with a variety of devices I own
by
Jerry E Smith
©09/16/2022
All images are original, taken with a variety of devices I own
A job well done, we had the same decision to make when we moved into our place here, two trees in the back yard had signs of Rot and damage, I debated back and forth of a well domne pruning or removal, in the end I went with removal, and one like yours I discovered could probably have got by with just a pruning the other weas the right choice it was in bad shape
Thanks for joining Wednesday Walk :), I truly enjoy exploring the world virtually each Wednesday seeing walks from all around the globe and feeling I am there and experiencing it all myself, such as I did in your post just now :)
I feel better knowing I am not the only one to have made this mistake.
I am sure it has happened to many
A job well done friends i never new it was such a big one
I have watched some of your videos on Venmo too the tree is really tall @jerrytsuseer
It was very large AND very tall. Thanks for commenting Toby
I also watched some of your videos on viemo it wasn't an easy job @jerrytsuseer
It wasn't easy watching my videos on Vimeo? ha ha ha
You are welcome friend @jerrytsuseer
It's difficult to make a decision like that. You couldn't know what was really inside the trunk of the tree. Looks like they did a good job, though.
Good Morning @scribblingramma , I am pleased with the work, but I could have wished for it to have cost just a BIT less ha ha ha.
Aside from lamenting taking the tree out completely when it was revealed to be healthy after the fact, I REALLY lament not looking ahead and making plans to use or sell that HUGE SOLID Trunk of green oak.
I hope someone got it, and it didn't go to a burn pit or chipper
It's quite a huge tree and a beautiful one at that.
I could imagine your disappointment at the absence of any sign of rot in the just hewn down stem.
Perhaps there was some technology to help determine that! That would really rock.
But then as against some lovely outdoor shade, you've got some fire wood for fire to keep warm when necessary.
It really didn't shade the house much, but it did shade the yard in that area so that stuff wouldn't grow there. Won't be much of a problem now.
Thanks for commenting @unomi
You could have a stump grinder brought in and grind that out and then make a really nice garden there, and yes, it does suck to have to remove such a big tree. As someone who has removed a couple I did really hate taking out live healthy ones. But one cannot tell from the ground. They have professionals who check them out, they are arborists. Where I worked they didn't care, nor did they consult arborists for removals. The ones I liked working with were the trees that fell or had to be removed in the middle of the night falling across powerlines and having rain, mud, and snow around; for me that was extreme fun.
I did not know it was such a big tree as it was, but that pic of your standing on the stump is amazing 😮 I've never heard of the "salt and seaweed" treatment... quite interesting... 🤔 Such a shame that it's gone, but maybe this will allow you to have some azalea bushes or other flowers now that there's not so much shade on that side of the house.🌺