todays job

Spent the day deadwooding sugar maples, felt good to get out climbing again, even with a sprained thumb.

I had a funny thing happen though, I bundled up my rope and threw it down the other side of the tree, just to have my rope land on the bottom limb and tie itself into a perfect bowline around the limb.

what I think happened was there was a slip knot a couple feet from the end of my rope and the end sliped though it on the other side of the branch, when I started to decend it pulled the slip knot through and tied a bowline.

Lucky my TIP was only about 60' high so I didn't have to retie to get to that branch.
 
Was a little tired from yesterdays job. Climbed an ash for a friend. Pushed it off for quite some time b/c it was over the open two phase a tad. Worked out well and was able to get some wood from it, split it on the job and transported it home. Don't get to climb much b/c of the primary job schedule. Beautiful day sunday was.
 
Took down a larger (28" dbh), leaning toward the house red alder for a friend of my employee Ben. Its been snowing, so that was interesting to work in. Its been a year since a white worksite.

Homeowner is going to process all the firewood from dropped logs and borrow a little chipper from a friend. I love drop and leave jobs.

He's a general contractor and knows many people in town. He's pretty happy that its down before 6" of snow and high winds come tonight. We don't get much snow in Olympia.

Sold one job, bid a storm damaged pine removal. Talked to today's job's neighbor about an unbeknownst to her topped maple. They had a cedar break and land in their yard in last week's minor windstorm.

We'll see.
 
Pics from the last couple days.

Deadwooded a bunch of silver maples. The buildings in the back are residences and lecture halls. There are thousands of people passing underneath these trees everyday.

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The view
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Retrenchment pruning on two Fagus sylvatica. Lot's of tip dieback and deadwood.
1st one, before and after.
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2nd one is smaller, didn't turn out quite as well.
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Rob,

Looks like you get the opportunity to do more preservation work than some of us who work for homeowners in sometimes smaller confines. Homeowners are maybe a harder sell on longterm monitoring and maintenance. You've shared some good tree situations and discussions (aging trees in formal row, bolting up a tree next to the building, pull testing and cabling of those trees near the stone structure). I'll bet its satisifying.

Wondering if the university does any type of educational signage to help people understand what they are seeing, such as with the retrenchment pruning. Someone that sees the "before" and "after" will have a much different perspective than students for years to come passing through the U. Will they think that its just been "topped" rather than hazard mitigated and "preserved"?

For many a college student, the university is the "be all, end all of knowledge", so if they mistakenly think that its been topped for safety, they might go with it.


Any involvement from a forestry department student group, if you have such a department?

I would think that if I were a forestry student, I'd be very interesting in seeing this side (arboricultural more than silvacultural). As well, Forestry Club people might be interested in the educating the public part.

They might be be a good source of fund raising for signage, as I can imagine the university might not have the funding for signage. We did hot dog/ bake sales in busy school building hallways for our Outdoor Adventure Club trips. Easy money for the students to raise, and I met a lot of cute co-eds.

Looks like a really nice "office" with the architecture, etc.
 
Sorry, Tom. I'll fix that. I have a large monitor, it's hard to tell if the pics have messed up the sizing.
Yeah, sunscald. Time will tell I suppose. I think it was you that posted a bunch of photos of some sunscald on a nice beech before? Luckily these two are in a fairly shelterd area, not alot of direct sun. I have to do the same type of work on a much bigger beech soon that does have direct sun (I've posted about this one before). It has to come down about 2 meters but can be done over several years if need be.

[ QUOTE ]
Will they think that its just been "topped" rather than hazard mitigated and "preserved"?

[/ QUOTE ]
Good point, Sean. I had never really considered the public perception of the work I am doing. Funny, I teach one or two labs a year but never thought that the rest of the time I am "teaching" as well! I get people stopping all the time to ask questions but it's usually about something other than what I am doing at the time, or they just stop to watch you work. The bigshot is always a hit too! These beeches are out of the way, so they will not likely get much attention from the public. It's also the whole death-with-dignity arguement too. Some of the removals end up being trees that are just so ugly that they have to go. I'm pretty sure though that I am leaving trees standing that many others would have taken out already.

I have to do some retrenching on both the beech and the maple I had posted on another thread so thanks for the reminder that other's are watching and learning by example. In truth, sometimes it's hard to think of the public around here as much more than cattle there is just so many of them around!
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People do learn by what they observe, good or bad. Isn't that how we ended up with this mulch volcano epidemic!?!
 
i personally don't think sun scald will be an issue as this was done late in the year right? doesn't this give the tree time to adapt to the sun before summer?
gives time for new advantageous growth to form and the tree can adapt to all the new heat and light, right?
 
[ QUOTE ]
i personally don't think sun scald will be an issue as this was done late in the year right? doesn't this give the tree time to adapt to the sun before summer?
gives time for new advantageous growth to form and the tree can adapt to all the new heat and light, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think that beech will adapt that quickly, especially if they are already stressed or diseased, which these appear to be... Otherwise they wouldn't need retrenchment pruning, right?

-Tom
 
Re: today\'s job

Worked for a Tribal Housing Authority. A different slice of life than some of the fancy places we all get to work, time to time.

Lots of free range dogs and puppies. Cute dog parades.

Some people definitely are "trying", while others fulfill the public housing stereotype. A tough life for some people.

We worked on some hazard tree removals, all Geary oaks, so a change of tree from all the conifers, maples, and alders that are the most common natives. Mainly, heavily leaning trees. One was a real struggle to climb, as the wet, super mossy, slimy barked 12-14"-ish trunk curved over almost horizontal before turning upright again. It had grown under tall doug-firs and other oaks.

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This is from a badly included oak at the tribal housing authority that split in a previous wind storm which we lifted off with a knuckleboom. This is about half the tree. I anchored into the chimney, and redirected around the other chimney while working on the roof, cutting the smaller limbs and throwing them off the roof, getting the remaining piece as close to the supporting points as possible, to lighten the lift.


The one overhanging the yellow duplex has many bad inclusions in between all those trunks. They aren't interested in cabling/ bracing, just removal. The Reservation has a lot of forest.
Actually, yesterday a self-loading log truck was hauling out logs, and a dump truck was hauling out short logs just a few hundred yards away.
 
today\'s job

~24" Norway Maple removal. One dead lead, several weak unions, right over portion of house. Doesn't look like much in the pics, but it pretty much filled the chip box and totally filled my EZ dumper. Did it almost for free as a favor to the guy who runs the cemetery where I park my stuff. It was damn cold, snow made it a pain, but the view was fantastic, and the client is top notch!

http://picasaweb.google.com/tomthetreeman/NorwayRemovalDouglasProperty#

-Tom
 
Re: today\'s job

Rigged and bombed these 2 Oregon White Oaks that overhung the house at the Tribal Housing as seen in the post above. This was the yellow building in the background above.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/southsoundtree/5302406846/in/photostream/

Supported and lifted the vertical-turned-horizontal leads with one rigging rope and a spiderleg to the second lead, allowing me to get out to the tip and natural crotch rig the ends off of themselves, swinging just shy of the roof.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/southsoundtree/5302408204/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/southsoundtree/5302408770/in/photostream/
After chunking back a bit, after the ends were rigged back.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/southsoundtree/5301841939/in/photostream/
 
Re: today\'s job

[ QUOTE ]
Tom,

looks like a real nice day though.

days are getting longer now..
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[/ QUOTE ]

It was a nice little job. I like working down your way once in a while! :)
 
Re: today\'s job

From yesterday. Large American Elm removal, right over a historic home in Pawtuxet Village. Tree was sound, but client has elderly parents moving in and is building an addition... Tree was about 5' from the rear of the house, no getting around removal, unfortunately. :(

Sorry, only one pic... But the whole day was professionally filmed for promotional video(s). Should be some sweet footage!

-Tom
 

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