trees are not always good things

This is me, having a “heart attack”

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High winds last night.  Lost the internet a few times.  A bit of a storm, later on.

Several times, I took a quick walk around the yard to check on things and picked up downed branches (one of the apple trees in the west yard lost a big one).

I paused to take a short video, during which my heart was in my throat.

Can you see those power lines?

Can you see those branches, whipping about at the power lines?

When we can finally get those cleared, it’s going to be so much better for my blood pressure.

The Re-Farmer

Looking ahead: spruce grove fence line

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I won’t be able to continue cleaning up the perimeter of the spruce grove for a while, yet, but this evening, I decided to walk through it, check things out and take some photos of what it looks like now, so I can go over them later and plan ahead for when I work in the area next year.

Mostly, though, I wanted to go along the fence line I plan to work on soon, and especially check on the fence where I knew a tree fell on it.

Here’s a look at what I’ll be working on in that area.

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In this first photo, you’re actually seeing the tops of two trees.  In the foreground, to the right, is the top of a tree that fell some time ago.  On the other side of the fence is the top of the tree my brother had cut off, to get its weight off the barbed wire to the right of the fence post.

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Here, you can see the mess of dead branches, and the section of barbed wire that was damaged by the fallen tree.

All along the fence line, I am seeing trees that have sown themselves on the outside of the fence.  In the section of fence line going in the other direction, some have been there so long, they are full sized, mature trees.  I’ll just have to clean them up and leave them.  However, going towards the gate, the self-sown trees are still quite little, and I want to clean them out while it’s still easy to do.  This had not been done between the fence and ditch on the far side of the gate.  It’s not just overgrown, but practically a forest.  This affects ditch drainage and, of course, visibility.

I have no plans at this point for clearing that out, except perhaps what needs to be done for visibility.  For now, I need to just focus on the inner yard.

The first of the above photos shows the two, quite large, trees that have come down, with one of them landing on the fence.  A third tree is caught up in the mess, too.

I found this interesting…

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The damaged barbed wire is propped up with a stick!  I’m guessing my older brother did this, after cutting the tree loose from the wire.

Also, that pile on the other side of the stick?

That’s an ant hill.  Red ants like to build big nests like that, using spruce needles.

I did not try to get close enough to see if it’s an active nest.  Yet.

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Oh, look.  Another Bud Light can.

I’ve found a number of beer cans around the place.  I think my late brother was the only one to drink that brand of beer.  Since he died in the early summer of 2010, that means these have been sitting around for a minimum of about 9 years.  It looks like no one has gone through here to clean things up in at least that amount of time, too.

This is why the tree came down.  Ant damage.  From the freshness of the exposed wood, I’d say this tree fell within the past year, year and a half, at most.

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The other tree came down for the same reason, though quite a while ago, from how much the wood is weathered.

This makes at least three large spruces that have come down after being weakened by ants, that I have found.  While there were many other downed trees scattered about the spruce grove, there are also a significant number of dead spruces still standing.  And there’s no real way to see if any of them have ant damage, just by looking at them.

Which is why I look forward to having the tools to start cutting them down, before they fall and cause more damage.

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This undergrowth will be kept, after we clean the dead trees off of it.  I think it’s a type of juniper.

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There is an area full of wild roses, closer to the house, that will be cleaned up, but also kept.

I took quite a few more photos, though less than I would have, were it were not so difficult to wrestle my way through the undergrowth and dead trees and branches.

Cleaning up this area is going to be a huge job.  I’m hoping by the time we get to it, we’ll not only have a full size chain saw, but some sort of large wagon or small trailer we can use to help haul things away more easily.  All the work done in the maple grove was downright easy compared to what is going to need doing in here!!  I would not be surprised if it takes me a couple of summers to finish, at least.

At least I’ve got some idea of what we’ll be facing in there!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove perimeter, down the line

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I got another hour or two or work along the north side of the spruce grove.  I almost forgot to take a before picture, so the first one below was taken after I’d already removed one of the larger, low hanging branches in the first tree I worked on.

This northern row of spruce trees – at least the larger ones, that were deliberately planted – were planted by my oldest brother, probably before I was born.

There are smaller ones that are likely self sown.  I am focusing on just that northernmost row of trees, though sometimes I’ve had to work farther in, just so I can access them.

The trees just inside this row my brother planted, have me perplexed.  From their ages and sizes, I would guess they were self sown, and yet some of them are forming another straight line – or is it two straight lines? – parallel to the row I’m working on.  So it may be that some were planted, and some were self sown?

Either way, most of them are either dead, or almost dead.  I’ve taken some out, as needed, but the rest will wait until I start working farther into the spruce grove, next year.

While working, I saw evidence that, at some point, someone else had been clearing this area, too.  In some places, I uncovered hidden cut stumps, and at one point, I even found a fairly large pile of cut branches, hidden by the overhanging branches of the spruces.

When looking through here in the winter, I saw a small harrow under the branches, so I knew I would reach it eventually.  It turns out to be right after the pile of cut branches I had just cleaned out.

Also, a Bud Light can.

After finding it, I figured I would cut away some of the dead branches, so I could reach it better to pull it out.  After cutting them, however, I found I wasn’t able to pull them out.

Whoever dumped the harrow there, dropped it on top of the branches.

So I had to pull the harrow out, to pull the branches out.

Which is when I discovered that it was dumped there, upside down.

That’s right.  Those spikes were facing UP.

The cable would likely have been used as a handle; I am thinking it was pulled manually, when it was used.  It’s so small, anything bigger than a lawn tractor to pull it would be overkill.  But I am just guessing.  I have no idea how long it’s been there, who put it there, or why it was left where it was.

Now I have to figure out what to do with it!

I continued on until I got close to one of the first self-sown poplars along the way.

Most of what is now uncovered will be trimmed and cleared until I can go over it with the weed trimmer and, eventually, the mower.  I found some wild roses that I will likely take out; I want to keep the ones that are growing inside the spruce grove, but I don’t think I will keep the ones in this area.

I am waffling about keeping the poplars.  They are growing at the very edge of the low hanging branches.  Once the branches are clear, there will be quite a gap between the poplars and the spruces.  Do I really want to leave them, that far into the garden area?  Ultimately, that gap is just the right distance for both the spruces and the poplars to do well, so if I do want to keep them, they are in the best places for a new row of trees.

But do I want a new row of trees?

For now, I will leave them.

Next to the last tree I worked on before stopping for the day, there is a pair of trunks that make up one self-sown tree.  One side – the larger one – is dead.  I noticed something odd about the leaves on the smaller side.

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This appears to be some sort of fuzzy infestation.  Insect?  Fungus?  I don’t know.  They are all over this one tree.

Whatever it is, the remains of this tree will be taken down.

Tomorrow. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove perimeter, start

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I got a few hours work on the spruce grove this morning/afternoon, and plan to head out again, but here’s progress so far!

I’ve started at the north west corner, where the stone cross is.

This is more or less what we see out of our living room window.  I went farther into the underbrush than I intend to, elsewhere.  This is part of the reason why.

That’s the top of the dead tree we watched come down in a storm this past winter.  The top alone is bigger than some of the dead trees I’ve taken down!

Here’s another view of the corner.

The topsoil here is decades of decayed spruce needles, so it’s quite loose.  This meant a lot of the spirea I cleared out could be pulled right out of the ground.  Every  now and then, I’d find myself yanking out anywhere from 2 – 8 feet of rhizome!

After this, I started working my way down the north side of the trees.

After clearing the lower hanging branches from the first couple of trees, I found a whole crop of little dead spruces that I cleared out.

Of course, there is always going to be some unusual finds!

The first was what I think is the top of an oil drum that was half buried in the needles at the base of a dead spruce.  I pulled it out, then took the photo of it right where I found it.

Then, as I was finishing up for the afternoon and bringing the wheel barrow over, I found the glass jar.

I expected it to be broken, but when I pulled it out, it was fine.

I have to say how much I appreciate my girls.  While I was working in this, I left what I cut or pulled out, off to the side.  My older daughter came out and started hauling it away for me – a much bigger job than the clean up!  My younger daughter didn’t have a shift today, and between the two of them, they took care of the household stuff, like cooking, washing dishes, laundry, etc., freeing me up to do the yard work.

We’ve started a new wood pile outside the yard for this.  It’s kinda in the middle of the outer yard, between house and barn.  This pile shouldn’t need to be moved, when we are ready to burn it.

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We do plan to rent a chipper, but there’s only so much we can chip!  Plus, even the biggest ones only do up to 4 inches in diameter.

It’s going to be much bigger, before I’m done!

Now, back to see how much I can get done, before it gets too dark. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: west yard trees – FINISHED!

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Yes!!!

It is finally done!

The maple grove/west yard trees are now finally cleared, trimmed and cleaned up.  After this, there will just be the basic maintenance to be taken care of in this area for the rest of the year.  Aside from maybe trimming the tall stumps, if we get a full size chainsaw before winter.

What a difference!

When I headed out today, the first priority was to clean up the branches and trees from last time.  In the process, I went digging around for downed branches under the last bit of trees I needed to work on, grabbed what I thought was a branch and found…

… metal.

This is what I dragged out.

I haven’t the foggiest clue what it is.

It went on the junk pile by the old garden shed.

Once I did that, I broke out the weed trimmer and went to town in all the areas I’ve been working on that hadn’t been trimmed yet.

Oh, my, does it ever look awesome!!!  (click on the pictures)

While I was using the weed trimmer, I kept having to stop and pull more branches out of the dead leaves, as I found them with the line on the trimmer.  My daughters cleaned away what they could find.  I had been taking what I cleared out of the last section (photos below) to the pile out of the yard, but by the end of the day, I was getting too tired to do both.  It was quite pleasant to work among the trees, but once I got out of the yard with the wheel barrow, or dragging a tree or two, it was like walking into a wall of heat.  So I started leaving things to the side, then the girls did a fantastic job of cleaning it all away, later.

While I wasn’t going to work on the rest of the fence line, I did go in with the weed trimmer.  I took the before picture when I last worked in the area a few days ago.

There was just the last bit to work on, over by the power pole (see below).  I went into it with the weed trimmer as much as I could, but there was a section by the gooseberry bush I couldn’t reach, because I kept getting stabbed by low hanging and dead branches!

This side will probably need to be thinned down more, but I will wait and see how the remaining trees do over the next year or two.  If the maples do well, I might trim the elms to give them more room to grow, because maples can get so huge.  If the elms do well, I may trim the maples.  The maple I’m standing next to as I take the photo (in the foreground, to the right) is going to need thinning, but it can wait.

Several times, I started to clear a maple, then thought, oh… it’s actually an elm.  No, it’s a maple.  No, it’s… both??

There were groups of trees where maple and elm were growing against each other.  !!

This next section shows some apple trees.

In the before picture, there is a crab apple tree that is part of the row of crab apples in the middle of this area, but this one had so many little apple trees growing around it.  Likely self seeded, as apples fell over the years.  As I went through them, trying to figure out what to keep and what to take out, I discovered the biggest one – the one that would have been originally planted – was almost entirely dead.  It had two younger ones growing next to it, so I left those.  They are too close together, but I will see which of them does better over the next few years, before deciding if they need to be thinned more.

The major challenge was the big ornamental apple tree.  The branches were so twisted and wrapped around each other, with living tangled up with the dead.  It was a struggle to get them free of each other.  Most of it was growing towards the East – the morning sun would be the only real sunlight it would be getting – and that’s there all the little apples is had are hanging from.

There were so many dead branches higher up on all of these trees.  The extended pruning saw got quite a workout.  Not just to pull down or cut dead branches, but to untangle them to get them down.

Sadly, I was not able to use my little electric chain saw/extended pole pruner.  I checked it over thoroughly (it’s really designed to be idiot proof) and everything looked good.  Yet when I tried to use it, it started screaming and immediately began to jam.  It was also dripping chain oil. :-(

Time to see how long the warranty is for. :-(  Or if it’s still covered.  All I can think of that’s different that might be an issue is the chain oil.  The oil it came with was perfectly clear, like water.  The chain oil I have now is generic, and red.  The paperwork did recommend using their brand of chain oil, but it seems not to be available in Canada.

This rather sucks, because it did make work go much faster, when it was working!

Still, I have the tools I need to do the job, and the next time I am able to work on the trees, it will be at the spruce grove!  Woo Hoo!!!

I love this work. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean up; west fence area trees

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We had another cooler day today; after this it’s supposed to heat up again, so I took advantage of it to continue in the west yard trees.  I am so close to being finished here (I’ve decided not to do the rest of the fence line itself for now), I’m getting excited, because it means I can finally move on to the spruce grove perimeter. :-D  I’d like to get as much as I can done there, before I have to stop for the year.

The first thing I did was finally take down the two dead trees by the smaller willow. (The before and after pictures are taken from opposite directions)

The one that was about midway between the two willows was a bit of a job.  It was tall enough, and leaning enough, that it was well into the branches of the big willow.  Which means that, after I cut the trunk, the base just swung over to the big willow, and there it hung.  It did not want to come down!

The wood from these trees is going to be kept for the fire pit.

The tall stumps are being left until we get a full size chainsaw.

On to the next area…

There’s not a lot of visible difference here, since I worked in this area yesterday.  I took down the dead half of the maple trees.  After that, most of what I did was take down dead branches from above, except from the one mostly dead spruce that will be taken down entirely.

Next areas; the last of those rows of spruces!

Also, I found a third little tamarack hiding in them.

It really looked like a spindly, dead spruce.  I honestly probably should have taken it out, but I really want to keep the tamarack. I also should probably have thinned the spruces out more, too, because of how close together they are, but they look strong and healthy enough to make it.  So for now, they will stay.  Next year, perhaps, we can transplant the tamarack, instead.

After this, I finally got to working among the beeches.

The before picture, I’d taken yesterday.  If you look along the beeches, you can see a single trunk, slightly out of line.

It turned out not to be a trunk at all.  It was a branch that had fallen straight, and was standing there, held up by the other branches!  You can even see the broken bit it had come from.

I’ve been finding quite a lot of dead branches held up by others.  One I pulled down earlier and moved out today, filled the wheelbarrow all on its own!

In the northernmost row, I found another Colorado Blue spruce, with an elm tree growing right next to it.  Well.  Two elms, really, right up against each other.

The spruce was planted deliberately; the elm would not have been.  Because of how big a Colorado Blue can potentially get, I took out the elm and some small maples near it as well.  I probably should have taken out the maple to the right of the foreground in the after photo too, but it seems to be doing okay.  We’ll see how the spruce survives.

Here’s another view of the rows.

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By this point, I didn’t really have the energy to keep breaking down the cut pieces and hauling them out of the yard, or dragging out entire trees.  I opened the gate at this end, so I wouldn’t be weaving through trees to the gate by the fire pit, then around the pile.  Instead, I was pushing my way through really tall grass, and wearing down a path.  As I was taking down bigger and bigger dead branches, and thinning out more trees, I just started piling it all in the space that had been plowed.  I will drag it out another day.

The row of trees closest to the beeches appears to be all crab apple trees.  Most have no apples, and the one that does, has almost none on it.  This is not a good place to plant fruit trees. :-/

Moving along the rows…

This area is not complete, though I might not do much more than this, this year.  The elms in the north row needed to be thinned out; one was right up against another, and it turned out to be dead.  The larger maple to the right in the photo will also be thinned down.  The side branches would have been suckers that never got pruned back when they should have.  The main trunk in the middle is suffering for it.  I wasn’t able to get all the dead branches out of it, and won’t be able to reach a lot of them until the side trunks are cleared out.

Once that is done, it will allow more light to reach the apple trees, too.

Speaking of which…

This is where I was working when I stopped to take a phone call.  Which was well timed.  I was at the point of telling myself it was really time to stop for the day, but I kept doing just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit…  and before I knew it, an hour had passed. :-D

I don’t know that I’ll be able to work in here again over the next few days, but when I do get back to it, I will continue thinning the crab apple trees out.  There is a big one at the end, with large branches reaching towards the power pole.  That part of it is covered with apples (it looks like another of the ornamental apples trees, they are so tiny), but only where the morning sun touches those leaning branches.  The rest of the tree is struggling, with few leaves and many dead branches.  It’s all just too crowded in there, with elm and maple tangled around each other in the canopy, blocking the light for most of the day.

The eastern end of this area of trees is where they are growing under the power line, and where the arborist will be trimming some of them back.  They can do the tall stuff.  I will do the short stuff! :-)

When I came out after my phone call to get the last after pictures, I got a couple of others of interest.

Last month, I decided to take down a small elm tree because it was growing directly under the power lines.  As I have been doing in many other places, I left a tall stump to go back to later.  You can see it here, next to the spruce tree I’d pruned the lower branches from.

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This is what it looks like, now.

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Maples and elms are very resilient trees.  You can cut them back like this, and they will start growing back!

I could leave it to grow, and just keep pruning it short so it will never reach the power lines.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea, though.

A decision I can make another time.  For now, I will leave it and see how it does.

Later, while visiting Beep Beep and her kittens by the old garden shed, I saw something I’ve been finding in a number of places around the yard.

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A whole bunch of holes, dug into the ground.

I’ve found some in the open area between rows of trees behind the storage house.  Now that I’ve cleared up so much of the trees, I’m starting to find them there, too.  I am guessing it’s a small animal digging up insects or grubs?  Some of the holes are quite deep.

Anyone know what might be making these holes?

The Re-Farmer

Clean up; west fence line, moving north

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It’s been a much cooler day today, so I took advantage of it and continued working along our west fence line.

In all, the before and after photos below represent about 2 1/2 hours work.  This includes pausing to take some video, and also pausing to drag away the branches and tree trunks I took down.

What a job!

Let’s start at that group of three maples, where I left off last time. Continue reading →

Found another one…

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While walking around the back of the house, I found this…

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Another burnt branch, in the same place I’ve found all the other ones.

And we didn’t even have particularly strong winds lately!

Looking above, I can’t even really tell which of the dead branches up there lost a piece and hit the power line.  :-(

The Re-Farmer

Clean up progress; west yard trees

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Today, I went back to around the west side of the maple grove to continue cleaning up.  This time, however, I focused on the area nearest the fire pit and gate.  This area seemed to have been mostly spruces, though only a few have survived.

Let’s look at the before pictures.

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This spruce tree is right behind one of our piles of wood for the fire pit.  It’s doing rather well, though as with most spruces, the lowest branches on the trunk were dead and hidden by the ones above.

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Right at the wood pile is an elm tree that we thought was dead, but after we finally got some decent rain, suddenly shot out some green.  It is still mostly dead, but we’ll be leaving it for now.

Most of the spruces behind it are completely dead.  Only two are still alive, plus one scrawny little thing that I’m hoping will survive now that I’ve cleared away the dead stuff.

I went further under the trees for these next photos.

 

Going through here, looking at all the dead wood, all I could think of was “that’s a fire hazard, that’s a fire hazard, that’s a fire hazard…”

I started by pruning the spruce in the top photo and working my way in a bit, then went to taking down the two bigger dead spruces.  These ones have been making a mess of my nerves, every time we used the fire pit and a breeze blew towards them!

I took the bigger one down first, because it was easier to get at.

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When it finally started to drop, it got hung up on the trees on the other side of the gate.  The cut part also just stayed on the trunk.  I finally grabbed a piece of wood from the log pile and swung it like a baseball bat against the trunk.

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It still just dropped straight down, being held up by the other trees.

I finally got it to fall, though!

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After this, I cut the tree up into small sections so I could move it and work on the next one.

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Which also got stuck and needed whacking.

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It, too, was being held up by the trees on the other side of the gate.

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My older daughter happened to come out to ask me something, so she got to do the whacking…

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And also got it down from the other trees.

After this, I took down the two smaller dead spruces.

Then I realized I had completely blocked the gate, so the smaller stuff I would have taken to the pile outside the yard with a wheel barrow had to wait.

Here are the after pictures.

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In the foreground is the spruce from the top photo.  As I cleaned up after taking down the dead spruces, including cutting back some spreading lilac and caragana, I kept finding more and more dead stuff, buried under dead leaves and grass, and especially along the fence line.

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I’m leaving the stumps of the trees I took down for now.  You can see the pruned trunks of the two remaining spruces here; the skinnier one has just a few live branches at the top.  There are still dead branches I want to prune away, but for those, I’ll need the extended pruner, so it will wait for now.

There’s still lots to clear out of here but, at this point, the heat was becoming and issue and I was getting ready to head inside.

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The remains of the 4 dead spruces I took down, plus some of the larger dead pieces I dragged out while cleaning up.  Lots of dead caragana and lilac hidden among the living.  It seemed every time I thought I was done, I kept finding more and more to pull out!

I was just taking these last photos when my daughters came out to haul it all out of the yard for me.

They are so awesome!

Though it’s no where near done, the difference is still pretty amazing.

The Re-Farmer

Clean up, west maple grove, continues

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Such a lovely day today!

We had a gentle rainfall this morning, and when it cleared up, it stayed nice and cool.

Perfect weather for some manual labour!

So after a run into town this morning for a medical appointment for my husband, I spend the afternoon working on the next section of the west side of the maple grove.

Photo heavy post, ahead! :-D

Here are some before and after pictures, starting from the south side.  I took this from where I last finished off. (click on the images to see larger versions)

I decided to take out the little caraganas, since there are two large ones in the areas I’d cleaned up before.

I didn’t use the weed trimmer first, as I had last time, since it’s corded and there had been rain.  I suppose the electrical cords likely would have been fine, but trimming damp greenery just makes a mess that needs to be scraped off the trimmer guard, frequently.  That, and I didn’t mind leaving the flowers to bloom longer, though dragging trees or pushing a wheel barrow through them sort of negated that particular thought! :-D

In the background, you can see the dry, small-wood pile that we use for the fire pit.  Almost everything I took out today got hauled outside the yard, mostly by wheel barrow, so very little was added to that pile.

Mostly little things to clean out here.  I am finding quite a bit of these…

20180725.cleanup.maplegrove.west.stump

… very old stumps of either maple or elm (this one is maple) that have a whole lot of suckers around it.  When I find these, I choose one that looks the strongest, straightest and healthiest, then cut away the rest, plus any dead suckers that are around as well.  After this, I’ll just need to maintain around them, cutting back suckers and doing judicious pruning, and the remaining sucker should survive.  With proper care, ten or twenty years from now, they should be very big, strong trees. :-)

I didn’t need to do a lot in this section.  A bit of clearing away in one area, and finding plenty of dead branches buried in the tall grass.

I was able to do a fair bit of clean up on the nearer willow, which you can see somewhat better in these pictures.  The willow was as far west as I worked, today.  There are two big old willows in here, including one you can see way out at the very end of the row, at the fence line.  The nearer one, unfortunately, it showing a lot of rot.  It sounded quite hollow as I worked around it.  It has had sections at the bottom cut away and, at one point, I climbed up on them to reach a dead branch to trim away, only to have one part of it collapse under my foot, because it was so rotten.  I am actually not sure how it’s still standing, to be honest.  And yet, it looks quite green and healthy at the top!

Another area that needed very little work; I mostly used the pruning saw to take down dead branches higher up.  That and removing dead branches hidden in the grass.

Here, things started needing a lot more clean up.  The wheel barrow in the background is as far West as I worked.

There were some small, dead and dying spruce trees that I took out.

Removing these is a multi-stepped process.  As you can see in the before picture, there are a lot of dead branches on the lower trunks.  I would cut away these branches from the bottom 5 or so feet, then top the tree by cutting the trunk at about 4 1/2 feet.  After dragging the top out to the wood pile, I’d then cut the remaining trunk to between 1 and 2 feet.  I will go back to them later to cut them as level to the ground as I can.

After I had topped one dead spruce tree, I starting cutting the remaining trunk at about 2 feet from the ground.  The trunk, however, would vibrate so much, my saw blade would bounce right out of the cut.   So I grabbed it and gave it a yank, watching the ground as I did.  The tree looked like it could just be torn from the ground, so I set myself up and started pulling.

Things where going well, until there was a sudden crack; the next thing I knew, I was flat on my a$$, my hat flying one way, and my glasses another.

Crud.

I very carefully squirmed to my knees, making sure there was no chance of me accidentally crushing my glasses, and began looking for them.  The problem with this was, I needed my glasses to be able to see!

Thankfully, I eventually saw some metallic reflections next to the wheel barrow.  They were fine!  What a relief.  That last thing we would have needed is the expense of a new pair of glasses!

This is why I fell.

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That little tree had been dead for a good long time!

When looking through this section of spruces before, I had estimated that I would need to take out 2 out of every 3 spruces, just to get them spaced well enough to thrive.

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I hoped that taking out the dead and dying trees would be enough to take care of that spacing I wanted, though they were all looking pretty dead.

I was mostly right.

As I began taking down some spruces and pruning the dead branches of the ones I hoped would survive, I worked my way over to where I figured I should take down another spruce, only to realize…

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…it wasn’t a spruce at all.

It was a sad little tamarack, hidden in between the dead and dying spruces.

Spacing wise, it was right where I should be removing a tree, so I could salvage the spruces.  There was a second tamarack a couple of trees over, and that’s it.

None of them look all that healthy, to be honest.

I decided to keep the tamaracks and took out the spruce, instead.

Which turned out to be a good thing.

After topping off the spruce I had originally intended to keep, I discovered it was so weak, I was able to tear it out of the ground.

I didn’t work beyond the second tamarack.  I think there’s a different type of spruce in there.  There are some Colorado blues in there, but one of them has almost silvery needles.  There are so few living branches on it, though, it’s hard to tell if it’s a different type, or if it’s just dying.  When I get to that section, I’ll take a closer look and figure it out.

The birch trees are as far North as I’m working in this section.  Aside from picking up fallen branches from them, I didn’t do anything with the birch, yet.  From what I can see so far, they aren’t going to need much.

Here, I had some interesting finds.  While pruning the lower branches of some spruces, there were a few times where I would decide that some particular branches were high enough and strong enough to leave, but on top of them were dead branches, fallen from nearby trees!

My pruning saw has a really well designed hook at its very end that is perfect for grabbing these and pulling them down.  Some, however, had been dangling there for so long, when I tried to pull them down, they would just shatter into pieces!

Now, I think I’m going to have a hot soak in the tub.  My shoulders are a bit achy for some reason.  ;-)

The Re-Farmer