The Farrier's horse and the shoemaker's kids.

[stig]

The certified arborist's apple tree!

The old apple tree behind my house has finally come to an end.
From what I can find out, the tree was planted when the House was built, 1846.
It has been ailing for some years, as you can see; a third broke off 3 years ago.
The rest is full of different fungus and structural cracks, the kind that shows the core of the tree is breaking down.
Another leaf out and bloom would IMO cause it to break apart.

Since we have all the bird feeders in it because it is right outside the kitchen window, so we can have breakfast and watch the birds, my wife was loath to have it cut down.
So we compromised.

The boys came around on an off day, helped me set up the new stove and dealt with the tree, since I'm crippled up.

The idea was, it's dying anyway, and unclimbable, so just remove what you can with a pole saw.

It'll probably last another 5 years with all the crown weight gone, but aestetically pleasing, it is not.

The birds love it.

I'm figuring that posting pictures of this on, say, Treebuzz, would have me burned at the stake.

What do y'all think?

I did turn it into a teaching moment.
Let the apprentice go over it and make me a formal hazard tree report.
His conclusion was, that since I love my wife and she stands under it to fill the feeders, we had to do something.

 

[Tree09]

At least you did it before it fell on the house!

 

[lxskllr]

I'm always about saving trees. I have a weeping cherry in the front yard that's 95% dead. Full of carpenter ants, rotten stem, and few real branches. The only thing keeping it going is the hail Mary crop of suckers. It'll stay til it doesn't get green in the spring. I think the apple looks fine. When it quits getting green, you can still trim it back leaving the stem, and it'll look nice as it weathers.

 

[stig]

I need a bit of help.

"I'm figuring that posting pictures of this on, say, Treebuzz, would have me burned at the stake."

What would be the correct way of writing this.
Did my best, but to my eye it doesn't look right.

 

[pantheraba]

What a history on that tree. I'm sure the birds don't worry about the overall look of it. If it is still functional for all, then good show.

 

[lxskllr]

Looks good to me for colloquial/conversational speech.

edit:
"I'm figuring that posting pictures of this on, say, Treebuzz, would have me burned at the stake."

The commas are a little weird, but correct I think. It's written as you'd speak, and that doesn't necessarily translate well to written word.

 

[pantheraba]

That sentence has a complicated requirement for the commas in it. But as near as I can tell you did it just right. It totally makes sense and I don't see any extraneous or missing words or anything amiss.

 

[stig]

It was the unusual amount of commas that had me worried.

Posting here has improved my English no end.

Thanks.

 

[Steve Mack]

Might have to wait on Bermy for that one, but it looks alright to me.

As for the tree, it'll look alright come summer. My one has been hacked a bit before I came here, not as big but looks alright this year.

Treebuzz.

 

[lxskllr]

On the note of my weeping cherry; what causes the weeping characteristic? I have a Darwinian approach to the trees on my property. Animals plant them, and I tend to let nature decide which lasts. I'll cull some if they get to be a problem. Anyway, birds plant lots of cherries. I had one come up in a flowering bush, and the tree won. It turned out to be a weeping cherry, which afaik, doesn't happen naturally. Did a regular cherry get modified by pollen or something from my weeping cherry?

 

[Steve Mack]

The Farrier's horse and the shoemaker's kids.

Just got it. Bit late, time for bed.

 

[SeanKroll]

Good structure to the sentence, too my mind.

My Gf's brother is part artist. He has this funny Grammar Cannon cartoon drawing that is inserted in letters and such, occasionally.

No need for it, here.



You could consider permanent props.


There is an English version... the cobbler's children have no shoes.

That's retrenchment pruning!

 

[Tree09]

And the painters house always needs painting. That's the more familiar version in the Midwest. Stig, I'm always amazed at your English, i have to remind myself that you are not a native speaker.

 

[stig]

Thanks

 

[Altissimus]

I just fell a large Sugar Maple co dominant yesterday .... right next to the house , big round crown. Have trimmed it in the past. Knew the day would come by its decline , the one lead was right over area where septic tank outflow goes to leacheate pipe , was always thinking I would rig the lead out., even set a tag line last week ... Several feet of snow here made it a bitch to get to but allowed me to dump the whole thing in two pieces safely. Still getting used to the look of it not being there but it's for the best ... got the extra ten years , was actually the way it sounded in tbe wind as it was way too close to the house to fail on it's own.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Bought it some time for the birds and the bees. Seen apple trees 150 plus years old only held up by tin and con crete over the cavities and any stick or board propping up what was left of the limbs. 2" rind only 1/2 of an 18" dbh stem left. Bees still hitting the flowers, birds squabbling over fruit or singing to the neighbors.
I did something more drastic once to an oak. It was dying for too much water from the garden above it and the wisteria wrapped around it. Could hit the house. Had bird houses on it. Aunt wanted to keep just enough of it to establish the wisteria better and happy birds. And not fall on the roof.
Lasted years that way. Out stood her. She got some pleasure from it before she passed.
Of course, being close at hand, you will monitor the tree untill it might be a
worse hazard.

 

[ruel]

Call it "retrenchment" pruning and the tree buzz folks would be just fine with it!

Looks like a hard prune, but not crazy.

 

[Bermy]

And here I am.
Imo fruit trees are outside the 'norm' when pruning, you do what you need to do to keep them going. Given your reasons for doing so, it looks fine to me.

As for the grammar,

"I'm figuring that posting pictures of this on, say, Treebuzz, would have me burned at the stake."

Maybe...
"I'm figuring that posting pictures of this on say, Treebuzz, would have me be burned at the stake."

But it's splitting hairs, your original read just fine, what's an extra comma or two between friends, as long as it isn't a superfluous apostrophe!
(I've edited my reply a few times already, so it's that close!)

 

[stig]

Thanks Fi.
Between friends, indeed.

 

[Burnham]

Tree looks fine to me, and the sentence structure does too.

 

[Marc-Antoine]

It looks good enough for me and has still a tree's shape. Actually, I expected worse from what you wrote before the pic.

 

[Pelorus]

Looks interesting.
For some strange reason I remember seeing some similar pruning technique executed by a crazy Russian.

 

[Jonny]

My dad has an apple in his backyard that’s in pretty rough shape, but the fruit is excellent. I’m gonna try growing another from a cutting off it.

 

[stig]

Looks interesting.
For some strange reason I remember seeing some similar pruning technique executed by a crazy Russian.

What you may not know about Andreij's situation is that he works in Saint Petersburg.
Under the name of Leningrad, it was victim of a really bad siege under WW2.
During winter all trees in the city were cut down and used for firewood.
After the war they replanted and in trying to find something that could handle the climate and grow fast, they chose poplars.
Those are virtually impossible to keep in check as city trees, so while it looks crappy, I think Andreij is doing the best he can, within his budget.

You'll see the same thing in Dresden and the other cities that was firebombed during WW2, no old trees.

In Hiroshima there was a handful of trees that survived, they turned them into shrines of a sort..

 

[Pelorus]

Thanks Stig.
A former mayor here had a bunch of white pines planted as street trees. I told him.he had made a poor choice (the damn pines).
Those trees struggled to exist. Exposure, lotsa road salt etc.
Being a politician, he replied that the trees were doing great. For several years the town (Huntsville Ontario) used to wrap them in big burlap tents in winter. Futile.
He had an ISA cert. arb in charge of town's Park and Rec Dept, but he was The Emperor.