Like you can read on this blog back to posts I still really treasure before I tried trimming a tree at all (my first year’s cuts here at Karafuto were atrocious!), that blows my mind to think of

So this is the tree behind the bathroom, those two cut trunks will be the central supports for a table and bench (there’ll be a rear deck as ground level, and they’re both a bit high so I can cut down to ideal) and I’m gonna let shoots off them grow and thicken a few years as auxiliary supports (that’s two years’ growth off the upper one and one off the lower, then I cut them down a bit so new shoots will have to stay wide of the upper ones)

Alright, went to clean up the lower backyard, do more grass weeding in the side yard, then went to finish smashing Blueberry Hill but I’m closer to the energy limits of my creatine dose and it was another tease, only halfway. Then I blocked some parking spaces for the crew coming tomorrow (at 8 AM!) to get up around power lines and trim the last untouched tree on the property.

Reshaping a bush by cutting it back pretty severely then as it regrows trimming the leggy early-season growth so that it comes back in really dense

Alright, started on the little bit of Blueberry Hill left to smash but it really was left til last because it had the least stable ground to stand on and after a few swings realized I wasn’t gonna have my big finish today.

So instead I edged it (ba-dum-tiss).

I also finished off all the weeding circuit except the yards – front and top rear – within the retaining wall, took the time to try to totally clear some subpar grasses out while the soil’s still moist and good to dig out clumps.

Dumped 3 buckets of pull onto my ramp down into the Blueberry Hill dugout shell, that’s just loads dumped on wood fill full of air pockets so when it rains dirt drains down there and I gotta keep packing more on.

Tree in the top backyard starting to bear leaves, there’s a part where I cut two trunks to mount a bench and table, and shoots are growing off the sides right to thicken to be trimmed into a candelabra of supporting pillars in time.

churchrummagesale:

No trespassing

See, the top picture is just what happens to a healthy, perfectly well-shaped tree if you don’t remove the lower branches once the crown establishes higher up – the lower branches get more and first spring growth as energy gets hydraulically pumped up from the winter root stores, so they try to stretch and outrace the shade of the crown but they just get spindly for no real gain – the thickness of a branch is basically representative of how much lifetime sun has been kicked up from leaves on the tree (!) graph it tops, look at how where it meets the trunk is noticeably thinner than the younger stuff above it, and keep in mind that sustaining the wood of all those branches in the interim not only came with some “support cost” but the opportunity cost of using that spring growth up higher

Aw yuss, there was a shoot going straight up from a tree in the backyard last year in a perfect place to grow a secondary trunk, but by September it had gotten its leaves scorched and dropped them but I left it up and now it’s growing new buds again this year.

kontextmaschine:

Uf, when I did some smashing yesterday after the epic day prior I appreciated once the periods where I had to go do something else for a while I could just take a few minutes’ break, the sets I used to need a break between I just needed to catch my breath again and the stuff where I once needed a breather I just readjusted my grip on the maul.

I also stopped in part cause I was actually getting sore in the shoulder and now waking up my core is tight in the way that means growth. But so no smashing today, though I might take the maul to split up some stumps.

Alright, got to those stumps, 3 I didn’t destroy but opened up the inside wood to the elements in a way that’ll rot them, 3 I cut last year a/o had a service come for two years ago are still too hard and intact and need another year or more of decay.

And that definitely exhausts my capacity to swing that thing for the day.

Haha, just realized all these “what the fuck is this” sprouts coming up in this one area for years are just suckers off a well-buried tree root that don’t resemble the mature tree

One thing I’ve really taken to appreciate about trimming plants is whenever you see a photo shoot of something well-done and it’s not of something in winter dormancy it’s probably been trimmed within the week if not immediately before, it didn’t look like that a month earlier, and it won’t look like that a month later

The side yard (thinned those trees out a lot last year)

Strawberry Ridge

The flower patch

Blueberry Hill

Annuals coming in out front

Woke up and there was a tree service truck out front with a bunch of branches down.

Unlike the last guys, who were clearing out for a new pole very nimbly with good communication, this was a hispanophone crew doing line clearance by butchery. Two branches I wish they’d just cut back to the trunk instead of leaving stubs I’ll have to hire a crew (around wires) to clean up before they waterspout up. It is clear the last crew understood how trees grow and this one did not.

That said I did manage to claim the wood for Strawberry Ridge.

Think when the mimosa goes I’m gonna replace it with a wisteria standard, which’ll still have the thick cascading color effect (especially starting from a base behind a retaining wall feet above the sidewalk) but not climb enough to compete with the other canopies around

(A “standard” is something not naturally a “tree” grown shaped into a tree form. The “smoke tree” already out front is really a smoke bush standard. Wisterias are vines, training them to standard has them growing a “trunk” up a support pole and spreading from there.)

kontextmaschine:

Alright great, the one part of the mimosa I wanted to have trimmed around power lines the power company just sent some guys by with a bucket truck to chop

This incidentally means that for the first time since moving in, all the trees on the property are up to date on trimming and will just need new growth pruned every year (and I guess like the occasional culling of 1 of 3 major subtrunks serving a patch of canopy once 2 develop enough to split it between them)

Like no, it’s great. A professional crew prepared for that exact task showed up for free without requiring any initiative on my part.

Alright great, the one part of the mimosa I wanted to have trimmed around power lines the power company just sent some guys by with a bucket truck to chop

debelice:

Aerial Pruning Skills

Every year I have to fear this is my mimosa tree’s last

So I wanted more wood for Strawberry Ridge so I took my lopper and trimmed all the street trees in a block radius last week, which were either terribly overgrown, butchered by clueless trimming, or both.

Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, and anyway only one homeowner told me to stop. Like I say I can’t feel guilt or shame these days and I think it threw him that I cheerfully agreed.

Anyway, his tree still had leaves on and I guess they iced up because today I saw it lying in his driveway and he’d had to hire a crew on Christmas Eve to chop it up. I went down to say (Google translate bridging a language barrier) that they could dump their chipped load with me, and now the tree’s all on Strawberry Ridge.

Feeling pretty smug about that one.

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Some freezing rain expected soon, so guess it’s a good thing I trimmed all those trees down below design weight with a minimum of branches to get iced (and that the neighbors’ tree already fell into my yard two years ago)

And christ, the wind is nuts; there’s def. going to be some branches coming down around town when they start to ice up. Well, in case the power goes out good thing I’ve got a bunch of good blankets.

Especially glad I took off all the ones directly overhanging the roof in manageable chunks (bc if my needs start to outgrow the house with time I was gonna have a gambrel or mansard roofline put on and finish the attic, and if I left it there it’d just keep wasting chunks of the spring growth-from-reserves on stuff that’ll get cut off eventually)