The day finally arrived. A day that I have not been looking forward to in the life of our property. That day is the day that our large, mature Norway Maple tree that was located just outside of our front porch came down. This tree was a lovely tree. Lived a good life. We moved the location of our house foundation specifically so we could try to keep this tree. But, it still needed to come down.
It wasn't as if we didn't try to save this tree. In fact, we surely didn't want to remove it. But, it seemed liked it was necessary as the limbs kept falling and I began to become worried that it would fall on my house. Or, my neighbor's house.
Over the years, we've worked this tree. Gave it a growth regulator in September 2022. And provided a deep-feeding of this tree the past three seasons. But, that wasn't enough. The tree was in decline. The bark was falling off. The crotches were rotting out. One guy even told me that he thought it was struck by lightening. After living a great life in this spot - providing shade and cover, reducing our utility bills and making our new house feel like it could have been here years ago - it was time to celebrate the life of the Norway Maple.
Here's (below) how the tree looked on the day that the team arrived to remove it. The canopy was thin, it had plenty of bare limbs, and the bark was falling in big sheets down the trunk. But, it was *still* a nice tree.
The mid-day shade this tree provided was dappled on our driveway:
The team from the removal company started by climbing the tree, roping off limbs and using a high-point to lower the sections down to the ground. They started with the canopy and removed all the limbs. See below for a look at the guy with the chainsaw about 2/3rds of the way up the tree:
They made quick work and took down the tree limb-by-limb. See below for how they rigged up the sections and used the tree itself to lower the limbs down safely. They were total pros.
Once all the limbs were removed, they started to work on the trunk. Here (below) is a look at how they pulled down the trunk - and used sections of the tree already on the ground as a way to absorb the blow:
All was remaining was the stump. See below for the bare spot in our bed this removal left:
I asked the guys if they knew how old the tree was - as the rings were hard to interpret/read. They said they thought it was a 70-year-old tree. I didn't want the wood to go to waste. One thing I know - after buying firewood over the years - is that nobody sells Norway Maple as firewood. That means...(I think) that this tree was destined to end up as mulch. I didn't want that. So, I had the guys cut the rounds down to 16" or so and we hauled them all the way back to the rear of our property. Here, below, is one of the rounds:
I quickly built a new storage rack using the cinderblock and 2x4 system that you see online. It was easy to put together and worked well. Here, below, you can see some of the wood on the new rack:
And there were some BIG rounds that we couldn't get up there on the rack, so I left those on the ground. I'm thinking...this will sort-of FORCE me to start to split these this Winter, so they don't rot-out. See below for part of the pile of rounds:
This isn't what I wanted with this tree, but the removal certainly opens up some new opportunities with a newly created, large bed that I can plant next year. That is...once I get the stump ground out.
The time has come for the backyard Fall lawn project. What I thought was going to be a total renovation - killing everything and seeding from scratch - has turned into a combination of patch seeding and total overseeding in a couple of ways. Once I was able to positively identify that I had an infestation of Nimblewill (a warm-season bent grass), I opted for a selective treatment called Tenacity. After a couple of applications, the spray began to work and has turned the tips of the Nimblewill white as it begins to kill it off . The killing and eradication of the Nimblewill isn't going to be done in this one season, but rather will be a multi-year program. But, with the application of Tenacity (while the Nimblewill is/was growing ), I think I've begun to defeat it. And allow for the application of a new batch of grass seed that will (I hope) take off and begin to grow in the final six or so weeks of the season. The backyard is a case study...
In our indoor container garden collection, we have a few succulents that we've picked up over the years including the Burro's Tail that I bought home from the office and (just last week) began the process of planting some cuttings. Upstairs, in the sunniest spot, we also have a container of Firesticks Cactus that I planted in 2018 . I managed to drag that Firesticks outside last Summer and then back in before Fall and it seems to have thrived the past year or two. It is pretty big and likely in need of a new container. But, more on that succulent in a separate post. This is about a new (to us) succulent that I picked up recently at Home Depot. It was a $3.98 2.5" plastic nursery pot that has these plump, crinkle-ended leaves/lobes. For now, I decided to just leave the Key Lime Pie succulent in the plastic nursery pot and stuck it inside a larger, terra cotta container that doesn't (currently) have a hole punched out of the bottom, but appears t...
A few days ago, I received a new comment from a reader of my garden diary on this post all the way back in late May 2018 titled: " Frans Fontaine Hornbeam Planted - Hedgerow Spring 2018 ". That post shows the eight columnar European Hornbeam trees that had been delivered and were being planted in our back and side yard to create (at that time, what I hoped to be) a privacy screen. The comment - from JennyW - is here below: I've talked this before, but I write this daily online diary because I get joy out of doing it. I don't run advertisements. I don't run sponsored content. I also write for a pretty narrow audience - mostly myself. I also look at the analytics data and know that there are really three audiences - in declining size order: 1. The largest part of the audience: (mostly) one-time search readers (they search for something, click on the link and end up at my blog). 2. Second biggest audience: Referral....
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