PRUNING CITY TREES

PRUNING OUT DEAD WOOD IN A RED OAK...

...END RESULT, HANDSOME TREE

OLD OVERGROWN BLACK WILLOW...

...PRUNED ARTISTICALLY

Thursday, 7:30 AM.  38 degrees F at the ferry dock, 34 on the back porch.  Wind variable, calm.  The sky is partially overcast with cattered clouds.  The humidity is 83%, the barometer falling gently, now at 30.15".  A lot of snow melted yesterday and another day or two of melting should eliminate most of it.  It is a very quiet morning, the dawning hushed, the early morning hours muted; no wind, little activity. I havre given up on feeding the birds, which adds to the sense of quiet.  It is just too much trouble to take everything down and bring it inside in the evening and out again in the morning.  And, if I forget, our buddy the bear will raise hell on the back porch.
   The humming bird feeders will go up in another month.  The bears have usually found other food sources by then.
   We are off to Duluth in a bit for a doctor's appointment for Joan.  We will see what's happening  wiht plant and bird life along the way.  It was a relatively easy winter, but it has been long.
   Yesterday morning Jay from Jay's Tree Care, who does our city arboricultural work, stopped by with his crew to get instructions for some scheduled tree work.  We spent the morning with projects, but started out just down the block on 9th St. pruning a red oak that had a lot of dead wood.  Red Oaks can have a lot of large dead branches and still be sound trees. It took an hour for Jay to climb and prune while his crew cleaned up and chipped, but the end result was a handsome tree.
  The City of Bayfield has a lot of wooded roadsides and conservation areas, and is responsible for trees up to thirty feet from the center of an average width road, so we care for a lot of native trees that are not typical city street trees.  The woods on 9th St. has several huge black willows that tip over, break up, and occupy large amounts of territory.  They can be problem trees but are very much a part of the landscape and can be very beautiful if artistically pruned, as evidenced by the end result in the above photo.
   Jay has a new heavy-duty chipper (cost:$28,000).  It got a good workout yesterday.