Tree Trimming

We had the arborists here Monday to trim a few branches off the big trees out back.  Mrs. F.G. had plotted which branches shaded her garden the most, so they came to cut them down.  We've had the same crew before, and I enjoy watching them and chatting with them.

The hardest and most frustrating thing about the job, one of them told me, is throwing the line up over a branch so they can use it to pull up the bigger rope which them will use to climb.  

But once they've got the larger rope up, up they go!  The leader of this crew, who I chatted with, managed the high ropes course over at Blue Mountain, so he loved the climbing part.

They use a small chainsaw for this work, a saw they can hold in one hand if necessary.  They certainly know what they're doing.

He's kneeling on the branch to be cut down, but they don't cut it all at once.  He climbed out where he could cut the outer portion and dropped it carefully.  You may be able to see he's roped to a higher branch himself.

Meanwhile on the other side of the yard another arborist was leaping up the Norway Maple.  There's inevitably a value judgement in what to cut down.  Our trees are Sugar Maple, Norway Maple and White Ash.  The ash will likely succumb to the Emerald Ash Borer at some time in the future.  The Norway Maple are a troublesome tree that some would say is invasive.  Its heavy leaves can smother the grass, so it's less desirable.  Sugar Maple is the native tree we'd like to keep, so above all else we protect those.

These arborists take a one-year course at college, and this firm has an apprenticeship program.  Arborists are very careful with their ropes, which they buy and care for themselves.  And this crew was very safety conscious.

You can hardly see the larger branch he was cutting down because it's on the back side of the tree.  Overall it was not a big job, and we were very pleased.  They really clean up after themselves too.