ktos wrote in news:4c086e54$0$1667$ snipped-for-privacy@news.astraweb.com:
After Hurricane Charlie,the large maple outside my building had been blown over,it's shallow root system pulling a huge hunk of earth out along with it. there were several similar trees around my apartment complex.
Chances are,the city decided your tree is not stable,and is likely to be blown over in a high wind,and wants to take preemptive action so the tree doesn't damage anything,like perhaps power lines,house roof,or someone's car.
It's good that they are looking to the future,not waiting until it actually falls.
The OP could take the situation to the media. Some tv stations look for situations like these, interview the resident, then go ask the powers to be.
pittsburgh is broke and then decided to remove 1500 mature trees for apparently no real reason. except the connected person nwho owned the tree company maqking a bunch of money. when the media got involved the entire project died........
it was pretty stupid ifb you dont have the money to patch pot holes why bother removing trees.
of the 1500 slated for removal only 5 dead trees were ultimately removed
Ah, yes, I know of the chain of command but they know the hammer of vengeance. By the time you get to three on your list, you've been visited by every inspector of every type they have who issues a citation for anything they can find.
They have taken discouraging citizen review to a fine art and I have the citations to prove it. I even tried to interest the local newspaper in a story about how vindictive they are, but as they had just built a huge new printing plant (ha! - they are selling it now!!) a few blocks away they apparently weren't looking to prove my point.
But the question has been rendered academic. They "sort of" returned my call because when I got home today, most of the tree was gone - only some logs and a tall upright section remained. The black, silty knot hole was really rotten and a stain that looked like a cross between black ink and motor oil was visible in the center of each of the sections of tree trunk lying on the ground.
Some of the black sections already were being eaten through (only an inch in diameter out of a 12" diameter log, but on balance, nothing except the wounded site where the big branch fell off was really rotten so they caught it in time. Too bad it's gone, I nearly drove past my own house because the whole section of houses looks completely different without it.
Hey, I am pretty sure from the treatment I've gotten that humans are a novelty at SOME medical groups. My favorite medical story is when after about six shots of Demerol for a really nasty kidney stone they thrust a paper in my delirious face for me to sign acknowledging the death risks from IVP dye injections, which they wanted to do. I remember asking, through the very deep, cottonlike fog, "Do I look competent to sign a life or death document right now?" And then I threw up on the release form, the doctor holding it, the desk, etc. They wheeled me into a corner for 8 hours after that until a family member came to fetch me.
Dude, they have laws stretching out beyond the event horizon. Of the four infractions that burn the most were: Left wheels to curb, trash cans beyond building line, having my car parked in front of my house for three days in a row without moving it and "rats were seen in your yard."
These are very skilled bureaucrats, able to deal with any threat to their way of doing business. The moral of the story is keep your mouth shut and go where you're kicked. I hate it, but I hate being harassed by nonsense citations even more.
If it were a matter of life and death, I'd go to the mat, but I've learned to pick my battles. This one has probably worked out in my favor, considering they dropped the sucker without damage to the phone, powerlines and CATV wires, which were threaded through the offending tree from multiple directions. They did a damn good job and cleaned up, too. Davey Tree service, if anyone cares, in suburban Maryland.
It's unusual they are being pre-emptive. There's another tree on a shared fenceline with a city property behind me that they have refused to deal with, even though it has a fence growing through its double trunk and it's twice the size of the red maple in front.
I suspect they have discovered that many trees got seriously damaged in the recent bit of endless snow. The pity is that the tree might have been saved with a little pruning at the right time. It's clear now that it's down in pieces on the ground that it was the "wound" made by the branch the broke off that allowed "rot juice" to propagate throughout the tree. Right at the wound sight, the dark color was spreading to the growth layer right under the bark, so at least I am content that it really did have to come down.
That's good. Now that it's gone, it looks kind of naked.
Down heah in Maryland the scam is concrete curbs. Every few years someone comes along, jackhammers out the old curbs (kerbs?) and replaces them with new curbs that look very much like the old ones. I know that PA is known for corruption, but Maryland's the state that produced Spiro Agnew,
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the corrupt US VP that resigned after the stories of his legendary bribery schemes came to light. No one can touch Chicago for corruption. Look at Rod Blagojevich, Mayors Daley and elections where more dead than living people voted.
That's a good call. Well, it's not dying anymore, it's hunked up in sections lying on my front lawn, stone dead. )-: I had no idea that street trees had a limited lifespan, but it makes sense. They have all sorts of things to contend with that a tree in the country doesn't have to face. I am trying to recall whether it bloomed this year. I seem to remember a lot less pollen than usual, but that's a really subjective analysis. I'm afraid I just didn't notice whether it bloomed or not.
The saline story is interesting. I guess a tree's slow "metabolism" means that poisons take a long time to work their way fully into the tree. Up until now the only tree care rule I knew was that you don't change the level of dirt around the trunk of a tree if you want it to keep on living.
I know trees are dangerous. My secretary's mother was killed by a falling oak tree that smashed her car while she was waiting at a stop light.
Perhaps I should have stated that the tree has ALWAYS leaned toward the house and this was not a new symptom but was a reason to consider removing it now that other symptoms had appeared.
The moss was always slightly separated around the roots. Not being an arborist, I didn't know if this was normally "play" or an indicator of serious root rot. I know that big buildings sway, I assumed big trees did, too.
Correction, I just wanted to make sure that the tree really was a hazard and that there wasn't some other treatment might that could save it. I see now that it was the right call. I probably would not feel that way if the sawn sections had come down clean, without the ugly black stains.
Obviously I am not alone in my obliviousness because a lot of people get killed or suffer damage from trees they didn't spot in time. I suppose I owe my buddy a dinner for pointing out that the moss crack seemed to have enlarged. In reality, that was the only thing that really stood out as different. The other items I noted were long standing ones I mentioned just to be complete.
Thanks for apologizing. I am not an aborist, nor much of a gardener so I really didn't know which of the conditions I noted were fatal. As I noted, some of the conditions had been like that for over 20 years (the moss, the breaking off, the leaning towards the house and naturally healing limbs and a line where the root ball has pulled up slightly).
Until the tree was felled, I could not see how deep the rotten part was - at least a gallon of black, moldy ooze dripped out of the hole when that part was cut down and laying on its side. Coupled with the nearly full "leafing out" of the tree, it didn't *look* very different than usual.
The only thing that alarmed me was a visitor, during a strong windstorm saying "I don't think you should be seeing the roots flexing the dirt as much as they do in the wind." When the big branch fell during the storm, it was like many other big branches that had fallen before it (there are at least 20 such knotholes on the trunk - they're easy to count now that only the trunk remains standing).
The difference this time was that it was a "wye" branch that broke and it left a cup like, upward facing wound that collected water. In that sense it was very unlike all the other breaks which were much cleaner and usually at
90 degrees to the trunk. I think that standing water caused the rot to spread throughout the top of the tree, dooming it. Not sure if that could have been prevented by plugging the wound with some magic tree compound. I seem to remember in my distant youth people tarring places where limbs had dropped off.
After reporting the dropped bough to the city (for special trash pickup) and noting my concerns about the cracking in the moss around the base, the arborist came by, inspected the tree, marked it for death, and it's dead.
So I repeat, I am not an arborist, so I really did not think the conditions I observed were as seriously as you thought they were, especially since several of them were not particularly new events. If that makes me "dense" then so be it. I just wanted to make sure the poor dumb tree got a fair trial before it got the death sentence.
Woodsman spare that tree, touch not a single bough, in youth it sheltered me, and I'll protect it now.
I didn't watch Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons for nothing, you know. (-:
I am just happy it came down without incident. If it had smacked into the house in a windstorm, it would have made an unholy mess and knocked out all my utilities, too. All's well that ends well, except for the poor dead tree. Of course, the wood's still out there waiting for another crew to pick it up and to remove the still standing trunk that's about 20' high. I suppose they know if they leave logs around that someone might relieve them of the need to dispose of them.
plants sort of know when they're checking out, and like men at closing time in a bar, will chose to go out with a bang (so to speak).
i have some 40'+ saguaro's that were felled on my property in a windstorm last winter. this month is flowering season for them, and the ones that are flat on the ground are chock full of flowers, even though they've a: been down for 6 months, b: have no roots in the ground, c: haven't been watered since they've been down and 4: are partially rotted and/or insect/packrat eaten already.
I was working in my garage last weekend and had the roll up door open. I heard some talking across the street and turned around to see a guy talking to my neighbour and slapping the trunk of a tree that is on city property at the front of his house (obviously a city employee because of the car he was driving).
Thats when I noticed the tree was leaning and had obviously been weakened by the last wind storm we had a week before.
Less than an hour later a truck rolls up with a chipper and down came the tree.
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