Showing posts with label Trees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trees. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Timber!

Over the last several years, as the ash borer beetle made its way through here, we have lost numerous trees. They died seemingly overnight. One year they were fine, the next, they were dead.

While most of these were ash, we have also lost a few red oak trees. This may have been because of something called oak wilt, which can cause red oaks to die in weeks. It is a disease spread by beetles, so perhaps it is no coincidence that these trees are dying or have died around the same time.

We have removed most of the dead trees around the house, but a giant red oak just over our property line remained. It was on my husband's mother's property.

We finally had it removed this weekend.

You'd think out of the 30,000 photos I have there would be a picture of this tree before it died, and there probably is, but I couldn't find it.

This is what it looked like before it was cut. Imagine it all nice and green, blocking the sky.

Tree before it was cut, next to an 8 x 10 shed.

Sorry to see you go, old friend.

The view after the tree was cut.

Compare the stump to the size of the guys.

My husband said it was about 3 feet across the stump. The tree wasn't hollow, either.

When the poison oak has died out in the fall, I may go down and see if I can count the tree rings. I'd like to know how old it was.

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Virginia Dogwood

 






Wednesday, March 08, 2023

White Blooms Everywhere

Sunday afternoon on a quick trip to the home improvement store, I couldn't help but stare at the multitude of white-blooming trees all along the highway.

If they are all Bradford pears, then this tree is definitely out of control. But some may be wild cherry, as we are a good month ahead of ourselves with Spring so far this year.

I snapped these out the car window with my cell as we drove by.

Yesterday when I went out to the grocery store, I noticed many of the Bradford pear trees are already leafing out, the blooms going away.







Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Redbud and Dogwood

I shot these photos on Sunday; on Monday, we had sleet, snow, and ice. Good ol' Virginia weather!







Monday, January 03, 2022

Year's First Snow

It came from the East, with wild howls and thunder

a snow like a blizzard along the Blue Ridge Mountain row

A squall with malice as trees fell asunder

unable to bear the weight of high winds and snow.










(Yesterday, January 2, it was 70 degrees.)


Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Dying Dogwood Blossoms

 







Thursday, March 04, 2021

Thursday Thirteen - Tree Removal

We lost more trees this week. The beetle that killed the ash trees took out a few more in the back yard. They were close to the house, so we had them removed.

The view before the tree massacre began.














My new view.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 697th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Friday, November 06, 2020

Timber!

During high winds the other night, a dead red oak tree fell over in the back yard.

I heard it crack and crash about 6:15 a.m.





We have lost a lot of trees in the last 18 months. The ash borer took out all of the ash trees and several oaks died. I think the ash borer also hit the oak trees, but maybe it was something else. Maybe they were simply older trees and it was their time.

I tend to think of trees as living forever . . . if we'd only leave them alone. But of course they do not, though they may live for thousands of years. Several trees are known to live over 4,000 years, and a grove of trees in Utah is thought to have been alive for 14,000 years. (This is called a clonal colony and is not an individual tree, but a large living organism.)

The oldest known oak tree in the US is thought to be 850 years old or more.

Mine, I think, succumbed to a disease or bugs.

Losing trees makes me sad.