On Friday the screaming of a chain saw was heard in the back garden. When listening closely it was also possible to hear the trees and birds screaming. Why? Because what was coming down was two more cedar trees and one of them was a tree much beloved by the birds visiting my back garden especially in the winter months.
Here is a not so good photo of the cedar tree in late 2008. It was quite a presence then in the tree area.
Here are the birds all over it in January of this year.
But here is the poor thing on August 1 of this year. We have had a number of storms lately that have blown down trees and I did not want to risk this one falling towards the house.
Here is the sight halfway through. I was so sad; I had to retreat to the upstairs and watch out the window.
And here is the gap now in my landscape. See that tall silver stump on the far right? That is what is now left of the second tree that had to come down on Friday.
You can perhaps see why. To the near left was the cedar that died last year that got taken half down earlier in the spring. That was where the green man was hanging. But Friday I decided it needed to go totally and the one to the right could now host the green man.
It has been a sad season in my back garden. The grass is not doing so well and the flowers are not putting on the usual wonderful display. I can count seven stumps from cedar trees that we have lost in the last few years along this front row of trees. I wish I knew why they are no longer thriving.
The next problem will be what happens to what used to be my shade garden. It is located behind where the big cedar was but now it will take the hot mid afternoon sun. So there will be more plants to mourn I'm thinking.
Time to put my garden thinking hat on and ponder what I can do to return beauty to my back garden.
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Do you know what did in the cedar? We have to watch our white pines closely - they can become host to a borer and that will kill them pretty quickly. We're still hoping our hemlocks are doing o.k. with the chemical assistance they got a year or two ago. Next up for destruction will be ash trees. I hear there is some foreign force creeping our way and killing them all. The one I'm not going to cry when it reaches us is rose rosette. It will kill all kinds of roses, which is sad, but the main victim is the noxious multiflora rose.
ReplyDeleteI very much wish I knew what is killing these cedar trees in case I could do something about it. Being a gardener has it's ups and downs.Looking back through photos from 2007 onwards was sad - it showed up how poor my garden has been this year. My goal is to make next year more colorful and disease free than this year.
ReplyDeleteOh it is always sad to lose a tree either to disease or storm.
ReplyDeleteAre those chainsaw operators trained Arborists by any chance?
Did you think to ask them if they have had calls to remove other similarly affected trees in the neighbourhood? i.e. is there some local disease spreading through the area?
If they weren't specialists can you take a sample of you tree somewhere to be analysed - assuming you still have some remaining cedars worth saving?