A large white oak (Quercus alba) by the back end of the house has been on a slow decline for a few years now. I've been told by a couple of different tree guys that the large oaks in the area that seem to be dying off in the last 5 or 6 years were all damaged badly by the severe droughts of 1998-2002 and now are succumbing to opportunistic pests and fungii taking advantage of their weakened state.
Most of the canopy had already been removed when I took these photos. You can see how tall the tree was. I'm always amazed by the skill and steady nerves of the guys who climb trees to take them down. Watching the branch they stand on sway with each removed limb takes my breath away.
A dogwood tree underneath it took a few blows. I might go ahead and take that tree down to allow another much more vigorous dogwood beside it to have more space.I haven't decided yet. Its amazing that more damage didn't happen while getting the oak down. There was so little space to drop the branches in that I was afraid we'd end up having to redo the roof of our little outbuilding (what we generally refer to as the shack). The shack survives with just a couple of minor dings. I've got a few dents in the ground I'll have to refill with soil and an awful lot of sawdust to rake about. It would be impossible to get the sawdust up so I'm just aiming to thin the layer of it by spreading it further. Then I'll throw some compost on top of it to offer up some additional nutrients while the sawdust breaks down. Decomposing wood tends to bind up nitrogen so I need to counter that a bit. Plus the nitrogen will help speed up that decomposition process. So I'll probably scatter about a mix of alfalfa meal, blood meal and coffee grounds too.
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