Lost Trees

[jyl]

We have four tall cedar trees along the north side of my house. My treehouse is nestled between two of them. They shield me from a busy street and make the view out my bedroom window look like a forest in the middle of the city.

Two of these trees died and I didn’t notice. I mean, I noticed when they started turning brown, but I’m told that their death starts years before foliage turns brown.

Heat, drought, and beetles. It is getting hotter and drier here in Oregon, and while that still means we are rainy and temperate compared to most of the country, our trees evolved for even rainier and cooler, so they are under stress.

My neighbor is an arborist, and has me watering and beetle/fungus treating the remaining trees. I hope they survive.

One of the dead trees was 50’ tall, the other was about 100’. Bids to remove them were around $3,000, except for one bid. I rented a dumpster and barriered off the sidewalk, my neighbor came over with his gear, climbed up in the trees and took them down in a morning.

It was something to see. He put on bootjacks, rigged up, sent a line up into the shorter tree, took off the limbs and then cut and dropped the trunk in four foot sections. Then he went up into the taller tree, dropped the limbs, sent the top down in 12 foot lengths along a safety line, then a bunch of four foot logs thudding into the yard and he was done. He left the lower 25 feet of the trunks and the more sinuous limbs, so it looks like a gnarled coastal tree and the treehouse is still stabilized.

Apparently there are certain birds that live in dead standing trees, but my neighborhood is pretty manicured so there is a shortage of that habitat, and we decided to provide some.

My son and I carried the logs and branches to the dumpster and my were they heavy. That was my exercise for the day.

Neighbor price was $800. I added a $200 tip and, since I know he also accepts liquid tips, a very nice 1993 Oregon cabernet sauvignon will get dropped over there too.

Moral:
- Stick with your neighbors. I hire and refer people to my neighbors whenever possible, do a lot of work in our neighborhood association, when the Covid downturn hit we started publicizing neighborhood-owned small businesses to support.
- Watch your trees’ health, water and feed them if needed. Water is cheap compared to losing a tree. I could possibly have preserved these trees, if I’d paid attention.

We’re going to plant a walnut there, but I’ll be dead before it’s anything. I really rather have not lost the 100’ tree.

[flatbutt]

Such a good neighbor. I used to hike telephone poles on those gaffs. There were times I felt more than a little insecure.

[jyl]

Now with the treehouse exposed, I need to finish shingling it . . . thinking cedar shake, 18V nailer, and roped off ladder.

[tevake]

Losing big trees is such a bummer, it so changes the area they occupied.

In sorting this place in fl panhandle I had to take down four major oak trees.
They had bad rot in the trunks, still looked good but were a danger to any one or thing in their space. Paid a tree company to take them down and put them on a burn pile
Cost $4k and they knocked it out in a day and a half.

I had to tend the fire for four or five more days.

A week later we had hurricane Michael come thru an take down a couple more small trees. Chopping them up and getting them burned up as well as all the hurricane tree debris scattered all over the yard took another two weeks.

Man did the place looked cleared after all that went down. Actually we still have lots of trees but much more open space too. Two years later Im still adjusting to the change.

Glad you didn't loose your treehouse.

Cheers Richard

[RWebb]

dumpster??

don't you have a fireplace or stove? or neighbor with one?

plant some new saplings now - it will take a while, but...

[tevake]

Dumpster. Burn pile? Yep it sure felt a waste. Had 15' sections of three to four foot thick clean trunk sections that could have been milled into very useable timber.
Just didn't want to come up with another $1 or 1.5 k. For the milling costs.

It would have taken a pretty big rig to mill those big logs.

Could have had board and batten siding for my shop, dang!

Cheers Richard

[fred cook]

Plant some new saplings and use a wood or steel stake to make holes around the tree(s) out at the end of the limbs. Add fertilizer to the holes and water the new trees. You will be surprised at how fast they will grow. Years ago, my father had a small black walnut tree in his yard in N. Georgia and did this to it. In just a matter of 4-5 years it had about doubled in size! Good luck!

[porsche tech]

Did the neighbor have insurance? That would be my concern. If he fell out of the tree or got injured on your property....

[stevej37]

I have the same kind of row of cedars...except maybe 50 foot tall.
They are all trimmed up..high enough to walk under. A few years back, I dumped my leaves, from the fall season, under the farthest cedar tree in a spread-out layer about a foot deep.
Within a couple years the tree started turning brown. Had a guy out to look at it and the first thing he said.."a foot layer or more of leaves cuts off the oxygen for the roots and will kill a tree."
I never knew that...that tree is completely dead now. I'll take it out this fall.

[KNS]

I spent $1200 last week to have three mature trees trimmed back, one of them, a Maple, with extensive freeze damage from last winter. I was debating having it done but after talking with the tree trimmer, I'm glad I did.

An unhealthy tree invites disease and insects. Better to swallow the pill now than lose a whole tree.

[Danimal16]

The drought played havoc with many of the Birch trees in our area. I hated to see the HOA just let them go. The city did nothing to attempt to save trees as well. We lost between 1200 and 2400 mature trees in our area.

That said, a little research shows how to stop the Birch trees from dying. After 5 years of low rainfall, it was not water and fertilizer alone that could save the trees. The birch tree gets what is called the Bronze Head Birch Borer. They get established when the Birch Tree is stressed and then stress it further; BUT that is not what alone kills the tree. Once the tree is stressed to that extent, the damn termites attack!!!

There are remedies that you can inject into the tree and it kills the damn borers and better yet the termites. There is also tablets that do the same (but also have the minerals and fertilizer). It worked like a charm on the four trees I treated for me and my neighbors.

Damn City and HOA would rather let the trees die than perform a bit of maintenance.

[creaturecat]

cost us 7k to drop one 75-80 foot cedar here, in Vancouver.
highest estimate? 20K!

[Bugsinrugs]

I had five 75-100 ft. Pine trees cut down around my house in January. $1000 a tree to drop , chip all limbs and cut into rounds. I spent a month splitting and have close to 12 cords. One guy wouldn’t do the jog unless he could bring in a crane. My friend roped and pullied those big boys and put them exactly where he planned. No more sap on the deck or needles to clear from the rain gutters.

[Bugsinrugs]

[stevej37]

Last year I had two trees taken down. A full size old Maple that was rotted and a Mt Ash that died from disease.
After they dropped both of them..I cut them up into sections and burned the whole works on the spot. The large trunk sections, I moved close enough to each other so that the fire carried through everything. Cleaned up the mess and reseeded the lawn.
Pics are a two month time frame.

[GH85Carrera]

In Oklahoma one tree that is an invasive weed tree, is the Eastern Red Cedar. They are hated as much as fire ants. They pop up like dandelions.

One of the projects we flew and mapped was for a company doing seismic work. They have to have a flat road to drive the heavy equipment across. They pay land owners for tree and property damage. One of our customers was their guy that went to land owners and discussed where the road was going to be cut. He was used to land owners talking about the prized trees where the sacred family pets are all buried, planted by great grandpa and hand watered by grandma from a pitcher brought over on the mayflower and how much those trees meant to the family. But for enough extra money they can cut them down.

Anyway he went to a local land owner and pointed to a stand of eastern red cedar and said they had to go through there. The land owner said my only stipulation is I want every single cedar tree on the property removed. Our customer was stunned for a few seconds. He then asked for clarity, and the owner said every single eastern red cedar has to be removed, or no deal. OK, done deal, no money paid to the property owner, just remove all the trees. Return it to grassland like it was. Win Win.

https://www.okinvasives.org/eastern-red-cedar

[jyl]

That’s a funny story, about the Red Cedar trees.

I’ve looked at heat maps of Portland, and some neighborhoods are significantly cooler than others in summer. It’s because of street trees. Our neighborhood was platted in 1909 and over a thousand street trees were planted. They grew into a wonderful urban forest that makes the streets shady and beautiful, plus we have a lot of birds and squirrels (and raccoons). In addition to the cedars, I have four huge street trees. Some of the original trees are silver maples that are nearing the end of their life, so every year more are taken out. People mostly replace them, which is good.

I didn’t appreciate how much the climate has changed and the resulting stress on the older trees. This winter, I’m going to figure out how to disconnect my downspouts from the sewer system (we have a combined sewer/storm water system, which sucks but replacing it would cost a fortune) and divert them to water the trees.