Tired of Trees

 

This is Day Four of cutting these trees.  Day Six all together because there was a day of burning and a day of finer cleanup.  This is the last of the dangerous work and we are glad it is over.  There was one tall Ash in there that was so dead and so brittle that we were really worried about cutting it.  The vibration of the chainsaw alone could break it up and send the top spearing down at whomever was below it.  Every morning after a substantial wind we would look out the window and hope to see the top down.  But no such luck.

All told there were seven completely dead Ash, a very one sided Oak, a wisp of a Hemlock and about two dozen small Ash saplings that wouldn't amount to anything.  We were able to cut all of these without damaging any of the Viburnum bushes.

While the guys were working on the trees, I helped clear some "Tiger Lilies" (actually day lilies) from the back of our mulch bunkers.  This is the raised bed garden that my husband built for the neighbors back in 2018.  We put the orange ditch lilies along the back of the bunkers to hide the ugly recycled boards.  The ditch lilies came from our frontage back in 2016 when we put in our water service.  We dug them up, stuck them on a dirt pile in the woods for two years, and then transplanted them into this spot.  While they are quite pretty and protected from deer, we all decided the bed would be better used for strawberries or something.  So I offered to help make them gone.  As I write they are filling in low spots up in the area where we took all of those big pine trees out two years ago.  Which makes it the third time I have dug up and relocated these darn ditch lilies.

We had to take a time out and relocate to safer ground when the big dead Ash came down.  And as expected, it exploded.

Could a tree fall any flatter?

Back to the lilies...

There were a lot of tops that will have to get burned later on.

We managed to save on decent looking Maple tree.  Because the surrounding Ash have been dead for quite a few years now, it was able to grow in a fairly nice, round shape.  It had four or five serious Poison Ivy vines in it, which we pulled off the best we could, and a Multi-Flora Rose up the whole height of it which was so massive it had gotten into a dead Ash next to it and actually held it up after it was cut.  It took three men to push the smaller tree out and a tractor to pull the vine down.

The finished area is looking very flat and barren.  There is still a day's worth of pick-em-up-sticks in there.  There are some very wide open areas now but I already have 10 nice bare roots Lilacs ready to go in and 9 other bare root shrubs on the way.  All of those are native and I am looking forward to arranging them in the bare spots so we can have some nice color and habitat for birds.  I think they will get a lot more sun exposure than I was expecting so they should do well.

That Magic Moment

 

We go to bed early so we often miss dramatic sunsets and moonrises.  But the flip side to that is that we are up early to enjoy the sunrise.  Today the world is on fire.  When I first got up this morning I saw the bright, nearly full waxing moon setting out the west window and now the sun is rising huge and blazing through the trees turning everything a brilliant red.  There are few clouds in the sky, but the sun didn't need any to create some drama.

A light coating of frost made the tips of these trees sparkle like liquid gold.

And the tree line behind is just glowing.

Red sky at morning, Sailors take warning.

We have some weather headed our way.

Work Smarter Not Harder

 The tree company called late last night and told us they would be here first thing in the morning to take care of the property line trees.  They came prepared with a lot of equipment.

Even though we called the phone company and had them tension their wire, it still twanged on the back of the crane.  Based on our experience with the logging truck back in 2021, we were prepared also with a very long pole to lift the wire.  

When they crane these trees out, someone has to go up and tie off the top.

Some of the tying off got a little creative.  That dead ash tree creaked and groaned but held.  There was no way the remaining top would support the whole weight.

There were a couple really big ones.  

Photos do not adequately convey the reality of a full sized tree dangling fifty feet off the ground.

"Dude - don't just stand there.  There is a crappy tree hanging over your head"

The best part is watching them drag branches.  Do you know how many days it would have taken us to fell and process those trees?  And we would still have to burn all of the tops.  This was well worth the money.  They spent about fifteen minutes per tree and it would have taken the three of us hours per tree.

Not to worry.  There is still enough work to go around.

All of this will have to be hauled back into the woods where is can be processed into cordwood.  And there are half a dozen smaller dead Ash trees left behind for us to cut and clean up.

Happy First Day of Spring

Finish Work

 

Yesterday I did the finer cleanup work around the West Side wilderness area.  I raked all of the twiglettes out of the gravel drive and the mown grass area.

I went in with a hand pruner and trimmed more broken and unwanted shrubs.  There were still Ash limbs tangled in there.  I used a leaf blower to clear the sawdust out of the rocks and generally tidied up our work area.

I found still more rose bushes but those I will tackle when we clean up after the tree crew removes the trees on the far side.

We have a pile started in the edge of the woods for the next burn.  We will relocate it with the tractor when the ground firms up.  No burning now until May 15th.  Above is what remains of our last brush pile.  The coals continued to burn down until it is almost completely flat.  

The Allium bulbs I planted last fall have come up nicely.  I'm excited to see those flowers.

The large Peony that I transplanted last summer has survived and is putting out some little red buds.  I was a little concerned about it but it seems to be fine.  Now I feel comfortable buying a support for it.  I wasn't going to bother if it didn't survive the move.  I don't expect it to be as large as usual but it shouldn't take long to settle in.

The Next Step - Border Trees

 

The next step in our tree journey is the property line trees.  These are all very one sided and misshapen.  There are a few dead Ash, a one sided Red Oak, one Hemlock and a handful of aging Maples.  The first two are well on our side of the line, but there are four large and dangerous Maple trees that are either on or beyond the property line.  The neighbors agree that they need to come out so we can continue revamping this area.

Property Line in Red

While the trunks do provide some visual screening, when you look at them you realize that they need to come out.  With the Maple tops dying and getting so punky, they are more dangerous than we want to deal with. Also, when you fell them into the lawn they explode into a million pieces and the tops have to be burned. We have called our usual crane equipped tree cutters and they will be cutting them within a few weeks. They will chip the tops and leave the firewood.  What would be three or four days work for us turns into half a day for them.  Well worth the money.

While we are preserving the undergrowth, this will change the amount of light that gets in there quite a bit.  Conventional wisdom would have us digging stumps, clearing the area with a bulldozer, bringing in fill dirt, and spending thousands of dollars on sizeable shrubs.  Or, we could just put in a privacy fence.  Both of those options would cost a lot of money. The replanting of shrubs would take a considerable amount of time for them to reach mature height and provide a screen.  And the fence would be...well, a vinyl wall.  I'd rather utilize the mature growth that is already there and have a natural habitat for the birds and butterflies.

Northern Spicebush

I have ordered a few bareroot shrubs to start with taking advantage of spring sales and coupons.  Bareroot is the most cost effective but they will have to be potted up for awhile until the carnage is complete and they can be safely placed in their permanent homes.

Aronia Berry or Chokeberry

My priority has been native shrubs with berries for the birds, but the neighbor liked the sound of some Lilacs.  Stark Brothers has a good deal on lilac whips.  That will also ease my conscience about taking out the hundred year old Lilac bush.

Lilac

I will continue to keep my eyes open on good deals for similar shrubs.  There will be some fairly wide open spaces in there which will be perfect for establishing new shrubs.

I Hate Rose Bushes

 Today we spent a few hours grubbing multiflora rose bushes out with a mattock.  It was too wet to get the tractor in there.  Some of them were up in the trees thirty or more feet.

That ^ is about half of them.

That^ is the other half

We crunched them up with the tractor and stuck them away for later disposal.

It looks much better.  I plan to plant some native shrubs like chokeberry and spicebush in here when we get everything squared away.

Spring Weather

 It is supposed to be 60 degrees again tomorrow.  

And then we can go back to sitting outside.

Typically, this time of morning, I would be out on my walk.  I even bundled up and was on the way out the door when my husband, who starts before me, came hurrying back saying "don't even try it".  The roads are a sheet of ice.  The sun is breaking through and maybe I'll go out later when the melt begins.  But for now, its back indoors for awhile.  Typical spring weather.  As long as it doesn't do this in May I'm fine with it.  We need the moisture.

Divide and Conquer

 A wet and soggy spring is the perfect time to divide or relocate perennials.  The ground is soft and they can wake up in their new spots and start growing without being set back by a move.

Last fall when we cut back the foliage I attempted to divide this huge Black Eyed Susan.  It just wasn't going to happen.  The hard root ball simply deflected my transplant spade.  I decided to wait until spring hoping that saturated soil and dormant roots would be a little easier to deal with.  And I carried a large butcher knife with me just in case.  I figured if all else failed I could stab it down the middle to make way for my spade.

But it wasn't necessary.  My spade easily cut the soggy roots and dead stems right down the middle.  I wanted to reduce the clump by half but not unnecessarily disturb what I was leaving behind.  To remove the clump you need a garden fork and some leverage.

I took the right half out but some growth hung on around the edge effectively removing the center.  I'm not real thrilled about having the center wide open so when this begins to grow I will probably pull some of the stragglers out and reposition them.

I had a nice big clump to plant in an empty spot I prepared last fall.  There were a few single little plants that broke away during the move.  I potted them up and stuck them over by the compost pile to fend for themselves.  I am not sure which strain of Rudbeckia this is (there are four and I've planted a couple over the years) but it sure is a nice plant and I wouldn't mind having some more of it.

On Top of Old Smokey

 We ended up getting more than half an inch of rain.  A good soaking rain.  New York State imposes a burn ban every spring between March 15th and May 15th, so if we wanted this pile gone we had to get busy.  A pile of well soaked, greenish wood with a lot of wet Ash bark on top can be a bit of a challenge to light.  With about a dozen newspapers, a few gallons of diesel and a leaf blower, we managed to make fire.  A really dark, smokey fire.

Once it gets going it takes about an hour to burn down to something more manageable.  We still had a smaller pile to the side that had to be added by hand because the main pile was too tall for the loader to dump the branches on top in any sort of organized fashion.  And the neater and more compressed your pile, the quicker it will be gone.

At this point it is time to "police up" the edges and get the small twigs into the pile and rake any debris away so the fire does not spread.

Once the flames die down enough that you can get close to it for a moment, you have to push the unburnt ends into the center.  We wear heavy leather gloves and safety glasses.  My forehead is always covered with a bandana, and a flame resistant hoodie helps too.  Even so, you end up feeling a bit singed by the time its over.

When it gets down to smoldering coals it can be left unattended.  We check it periodically throughout the day, poking the coals and stirring them up so the heavier pieces that are not getting enough oxygen will continue to burn.  By the next morning it will be a small pile of warm ash.

So that was four straight days of spring clearing.  We got the most pressing trees out of the way but there will always be more cleanup.  That's what you get when you are surrounded by woods and try to maintain some natural areas up close to your lawns and gardens.  That is not the end of the dead Ash trees, but those are the ones that were affecting us the most and now we have a year's worth of campfire wood ready to split.  

Even though the trees took up many hours each day, I also managed to get some smaller spring chores checked off my list.  

• I sprayed my apple trees with dormant oil and copper fungicide.  
• Spread deer repellent around my crocuses.
• Removed the hardware cloth from my alliums.
• Replace the hardware cloth over the hyacinths with cloches.

Waiting for Something to Happen

For a year now we have been waiting for something to happen.  Last spring half of the top of this big Ash tree fell and hung up.  The right side of the top was still up there.  Every morning when we looked out the window, the first thing we would see was this big widow maker.  We had looked it over several times and even used the tractor to lift it a bit and it was clear that any amount of pulling would bring down the other side right on top of us.

Last week the other side finally came down on its own.  Hooray!  Just the distance that it traveled as it fell makes me a little queasy.  That was one dangerous tree and that spot is exactly where the tractor would have been if we had tried to pull it out.

Today we took it down the rest of the way.

The end that was speared in the ground was cut shorter and shorter until it finally toppled out of there.

 

Notice there is still another big dangerous tree just to the left

Unfortunately, it is too mucky to get the tractor back there today without creating huge ruts.  So everything was carted out with a wheelbarrow.

I'm not exaggerating the mucky.  We made a big enough mess getting the brush pile built.  It is raining again now and is supposed to rain quite a bit tomorrow.  Thursday we will burn this pile before the spring burn ban goes into affect.

The ruts were smoothed out with the tractor loader

Now we have a big pile of fire wood to split.

We spent some time cleaning up yesterday's project.  We lowered stumps, picked up more sticks and trimmed out any broken Viburnum bushes.  At one point I was so tangled in rose bushes that I was ready to bulldoze the whole thing and make a lawn.  Then I got tangled up in a big poison ivy vine and had to go in and change clothes and scrub up.

It doesn't look too bad now.  It isn't one of those projects where you can stand back and say "well that looks a whole lot better!"  The best we can say is "well that's finally over."

For now.