Trees

For basically open pasture land, we have quite a few trees.  Mostly oaks.  We've planted other trees too - olive, crepe myrtles, desert willow, limes, Myer's lemons, peach, plum, pomegranate.  I guess it's pretty clear that I love flowering trees and any of them that produce fruit in addition to being lovely to look at are just fabulous.  All the trees we've planted are small compared to the oak trees.  The backyard is dominated by one very large and very old live oak.  I can't even estimate it's height.  It's huge and wonderful.  It's pretty close in size to other oaks in Columbus, TX that are supposed to be over 100 years old so I'm guessing this one is too.  Off on both sides of the huge oak are others that were planted by the previous owner.  Many of them are twin-oaks with two main trunks coming from the same root stock.

It's been clear for some time that they needed to be trimmed.  The huge oak draws most of the attention but the others were full of dead limbs and with crowns so dense that no sun reached the ground.  This is the grove of trees that's just behind our dye studio.  With the heavy shade we are sometimes more comfortable with slightly cooler temperatures but the growth is so thick that no breeze can get through.  On balance, I'd rather have a breeze.  And I really don't want to hear the scratching, whining sound of the limbs brushing against the barn and the dye shed.   My wonderful landscapers were able to recommend a tree service to trim the oaks.  Tim Richardson of Tree Care, Inc., Houston, TX 713-850-8466.

Tim and his crew arrived this morning and have been working non-stop to clean out my trees.  These guys are amazing.  I'm not really happy with heights but these guys just seem to scamper up the trunks.  They have ropes, pole saws, chainsaws and protective spray and are doing this job carefully and safely but it still makes me nervous.

I have some experience with trimming trees.  We lived out in Simonton, TX for 15 years on property that was full of pecan trees.  Peggy and I got really good at using pole saws.  It was a golden period of time when we were young enough to work hard on the trees and Peggy's sons were young enough to be interested in helping.  They were too small for the pole saws but loved to pick up the branches we cut off and tote them off to the burn pile.  This pole saw, however, is well beyond my abilities.

It's so wonderful to see daylight through these trees!  I'm sure the grass will grow better back there now and it doesn't have that heavy, depressing, impending doom feeling it did before.

They guys will be here all day today and probably half of tomorrow unless I give them additional trees to work on.