Naked Victorian



Ouch. I'm naked.


With the cotton wood trees gone, my old Victorian house looks naked. The stumps will be gone next week along with the Charley Brown pine tree that never grew much because it had been planted in their shade and it was a rutting tree for mule deer. In the fall during the rut or breeding season, bucks assert themselves by backing at a tree and rubbing the velvet from their antlers. This activity can be territorial, and bucks return to a tree they like. My little pine didn’t stand a chance!

I have chosen two new shade trees that I plan to have planted when the stumps are gone and holes take their place. Choosing shade trees was more of a challenge that I first thought it would be, but they will not be cotton woods or Siberian elms!

Charley Brown's tree.

January 2012 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This year started out good with a mild winter, yet occasional snow for moisture, but it turned bad when I found my two 100-year old cottonwood trees in the front yard had to go.

82-year old Floyd, using a chain saw with one hand.

Alas, I called in Floyd Bishop, a tree expert to diagnose them and after inspecting them, he advised me to have them cut down. Lightening had hit the one on the west sometime in the past. It had rotted down the middle to the ground. When we kicked the trunk it sounded hollow. I hoped to save the one on the east, but it had a crack from the crotch to the ground. One strong wind could have toppled half of it onto my house.

I grieved and grieved to lose them and the old rope swing that hung from a lower branch and that my grandchildren loved. With those trees gone, I knew my front yard would be bare and ugly.

Floyd Bishop is an amazing tree topper, felling trees since he in his thirties. He is 82 years old, has one hand missing (he lost it in a farm accident as a young man) and can out work most people half his age. On other’s recommendations, I hired him. WOW!!!



Fell right on the mark!

In a couple of weeks the trees were gone. Floyd waited until I was at home so I could watch the biggest one fall. He closed the street in front of my house and started to cut through the trunk. He had previously removed many of the limbs. After he hollered a warning, the tree fell exactly where he said it would. It was over 100 feet tall, and the trunk was about 6.5 feet across. 



Notice the rot in in the center of the trunk.