# Diary of a Rookie Tree Climber



## Chucky (Apr 3, 2005)

The other day, while dusting off some old books I’d packed away in a closet, I came across my old daily diary of my first season as an arborist, in 1991. I had just graduated from a two-year program in Urban Tree Management at a College in the Adirondack Mountains in New York State, and it was now time to put my book knowledge and newly learned climbing experience to work in the real world as a production arborist for a large tree company in New Hampshire for the summer, between semesters. I’d kept a daily diary in which I’d documented the work we did each day, along with my thoughts as to what I felt about the day’s work we’d just performed. 

I thought it’d be fun to post daily verbatim accounts of my diary both to illuminate budding arborists as to what they might expect should they pursue this lofty profession, and also perhaps to give the experienced arborists here a chuckle. So here goes….


----------



## Chucky (Apr 3, 2005)

May 18

Brian, from Tupper Lake, and I arrived in Laconia, NH, in mid May to scope out cheap, leaseless apartments. Our criteria was low, and we quickly found one that was just fumigated for roaches, and near the downtown action, so in we moved. Brian got hired at the Wolfboro office, and me the Meredith office, so we settled on Laconia, which is sort of in-between the two. Laconia has a very high unemployment rate at this time, so the townsfolk, I’ve noticed already, are a bit resentful of a couple of brash New Yorkers moving in and taking their jobs (though, believe me, few of them would have wanted what we were about to get ourselves into).

The Meredith office has got to be the tiniest office the company has in the country. There is the foreman, Leo – a true zodiacal “Leo” with all the trimmings (he’s actually a nice guy, though); there’s Giles, a tough, sinewy French-Canadian grandfather from north of Montreal (whose ancestors were Voyagers!), who could work all day without so much as breaking a sweat, and there was me – that’s it! Oh, and of course, there’s the salesman.

Today, my first day, we did a pruning job. I can’t call it textbook arboricultural pruning technique. Better, we hacked off the tops of a row of White Pine trees so tourists, sitting on their motel room stoops, could get a better view of the lake. It’s called vista pruning! The motel owner seemed quite content with the finished product, and I guess that’s what counts.

Most of the work was done by Leo in a bucket on a dangerous curve in the road between primary and secondary power lines. Leo seemed quite intrepid in this hazardous work, and he later told me they seldom work so close to power lines.

My duties were some pruning with a pole saw, but mostly picking up brush, raking, and chipping. We put in 10 hard hours to get the job done. 

P.S. Interestingly, the safety guy stopped by the site and remarked on how well we had safety coned the job on the dangerous curve compared with a tree company up the road he’d spotted with no safety cones. Not a word by him, though, about Leo in the bucket weaving and ducking below the primary lines.


----------



## MasterBlaster (Apr 3, 2005)

Cool. Le'see whar this goes.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 3, 2005)

May 19

Today was a marked improvement over yesterday. Giles and I were assigned a pruning job. Nice, big, _huge_ Northern Red Oaks (Leo was off by himself spraying Dimilin for Gypsy Moth). First we pruned a couple European Mountainashes, then Giles turned me loose in the boom to prune the giant Oaks. Cool! I was a bit unnerved at first, but by the end of the day I was sure that I was the _Rick Mears_ of boom bucket maneuvering.

Aside from the bucket work, we used pole pruners and chain saws and pruned trees like they are _supposed_ to be pruned. We finished ahead of schedule. Good day, 'twas.


----------



## chipper (Apr 3, 2005)

Would that be Paul Smith's college by any chance??
-signed, an adirondack fanatic-


----------



## Chucky (Apr 3, 2005)

Thanks, Butch, and how'd ya guess, CHIPPER?!

May 20

More pruning good-sized Oaks today. Starter motor broke off one of the trucks and we tore the bumper off a truck trying to tow it. We also lost a hammer and broke a pole saw. We also pruned some Canadian Hemlocks, cut back a big, over-mature Lilac, and pruned a large Apple tree that the owner I swear was wedded to. He almost cried when I took off a big branch. I think he grew up with that old Apple. And we took down a Maple one foot from a house – no fancy rigging – just chunked it down. 

P.S. The salesman thought the hemlocks were firs!


----------



## chipper (Apr 4, 2005)

Oh, let's just say that I know a thing or two about that area and I was very close to attending that school myself!


----------



## bgadway (Apr 4, 2005)

i live only 20 miles from there


----------



## chipper (Apr 4, 2005)

beautiful country up there.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 4, 2005)

May 21, 1991

Took down a large Beech today – one hour with the bucket truck. I pruned a Maple tree away from utility lines in the bucket. Giles wanted me to just lop off the branches away from the lines. If I had my way I would have cut the branches back to origin, or to a lateral that can sustain the branch. On another job, the bucket sprang a hydraulic leak! Luckily Giles had his rope in the bucket with him. We were deadwooding a huge Maple (5-foot dbh). 

An 11 ½ hour hard, physical day! I’m almost looking forward to spraying. I consider myself in very good physical condition, but I had no idea how physically demanding tree work really is – and much of it is from inside a bucket!


----------



## Chucky (Apr 4, 2005)

May 22, 1991

My boss (the salesman) apologized to me this morning for exposing me to primary lines yesterday with such little experience in the bucket. I didn’t complain at all to him about working close to energized lines, so I’m not sure why he was apologizing. Maybe Giles said something to him about it. Giles is funny in that he feigns a detached and unconcerned manner, but I can see out of the corner of my eye that he is watching me all the time to make sure I’m not teetering on killing myself with something. I came within a foot of the primary lines with the boom, and although the distal part of the boom is fiberglass, thus insulated (the weather was dry), my understanding is the electricity can potentially “blow out” the workings of the proximal part of the boom. I’d taken the Electrical Hazards Awareness Program (EHAP), but I was not a Qualified Line Clearance Tree Trimmer, so I guess that was a concern.

Today, Gil (he doesn’t like “Giles”) and I dead-wooded a large, spreading Red Oak over a motel. The boom didn’t reach the tree, so all pruning was done with the rope climbing technique. Gil did all the climbing. Gil weighs about 135 lbs, and boy did I get a climbing lesson today! I learned a lot about mobility in a spreading crown using both ends of the life line and a 15 foot length of rope as a supplementary lanyard – and sure seems quite handy! We did a lot of lowering of large dead limbs with lowering lines. Though most of Gil’s techniques were not new to me (Randall [Swanson] and Harry [Pearsall] had covered them to some extent at Paul Smith's College), having _real_ hazards around, and actually doing the _real_ thing, makes one really learn and absorb certain techniques and tricks of the trade.

47 Hrs this week. Week #1.


----------



## Kneejerk Bombas (Apr 4, 2005)

Thanks Chucky, I'm really enjoying this.


----------



## ozy365 (Apr 4, 2005)

Excellent thread. I would like a little fast forward as to how business is going in Syracuse today. I live about 45 mins south and work in the Salt City all day at my "day job". Keep coming with the entries, but a quick trip to the present would be of interest to me. :blob6:


----------



## Chucky (Apr 4, 2005)

Thanks, Maashorn! 

Bgadway, had a couple in my class go with Asplundh. And one who went with Tamarack, out of Canton, who contracted a lot of line clearance (not sure what they're up to now). My hat's off to you folks. Heard stories at the tavern of triple pole saw extension pruning row clearance up in the South Woods, Joe Indian way, beyond Parishville. I couldn't imagine doing that kind of work. Those boys have got shoulders wide as a stick of pulpwood. Awesome people.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 4, 2005)

May 25, 1991

Day off – Memorial Day. 


Man, I try to think I'm tough. Then I think of our fallen heroes.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 4, 2005)

May 26, 1991

Spraying season for Gypsy Moth has begun – actually started about a week ago. Growing Degree Days are behind schedule. Larvae average about 1 cm long.

We spent the whole day today fixing the spray truck and repairing numerous hose leaks in the spraying apparatus. Only got to spray one customer. The safety guy and whoa! the *president* of the company were at the Meredith office today! I never got a chance to meet him, and I think Gil intentionally arranged for me not to get near the big cheese, as I have a tendency to run my mouth about things the king cheese doesn’t want to hear. 

I told Gil that is nonsense, but he doesn’t believe me. Of course, Gil is right, as usual, and it’s just a blessing that *Leo* isn’t around when the king tree chopper is present.

Or the whole office'd be on the chopping block...


----------



## guff (Apr 4, 2005)

hey chucky....you a paul smith's man?.....those were my stomping grounds growing up.....grew up in massena........bet you had breakfast at the red barn inn a time or two.................guff


----------



## Chucky (Apr 4, 2005)

Well guff, not there, but I can tell you I've had plenty of breakfasts at Ma's Diner. I think you must remember that. On route 420 just south of Massena Springs. I remember Ma well. What a sweatheart. I used to live in Massena, BTW.


----------



## guff (Apr 5, 2005)

yep....remember ma well...out in the kitchen with her walker pouring my dad's coffee with her thumb over the middle so she wouldn't over fill it.....then there was morning after breakfast from tom donnelly's...the whole crowd was there..orval, okie....the man with the gimp arm who played fiddle like it was a part of him....i recognize many people from your website and have been to all of those bars..dated a gal who tended bar at the cedar for quite a while...i know big willy well and his nancy cut my hair for years...you probably knew my cousin pat from winthrop with his rock and roll hair and his camel brown vet...just one of the donnelly clan................guff


----------



## Chucky (Apr 5, 2005)

May 27, 1991

Sprayed Dimilin ® (Diflubenzuron), a relatively non-toxic (LD-50 about 4600) chitin synthesis inhibitor, aka a growth regulator to nine properties today. We used about 1000 gallons of material. The spray truck has air brakes, requiring the driver to have a Class B driver’s license, which Gil doesn’t have yet, so I drive the spray truck, owing to my possession of a Class A license. I mostly drag hose, while Gil sprays, but sometimes I spray too. I also do all the mixing of the materials, as the bigger boss (the salesman) wants me to because I seem to have a better aptitude for chemical formulations (and maybe also because I have my certification in Ornamentals and Turf).

The southern New Hampshire landscape is strikingly different from the Central New York landscape, though they’re only about 250 miles apart and roughly at the same latitude. I’m sure this is due to New Hampshire’s sandy, acidic soils borne from the underlying granite bedrock, as opposed to the silty-clayey, alkaline soils wrought from a calcareous limestone bedrock in Central New York. While the dominant forest type in Central New York is Oak-Ash-Hickory, New Hampshire is dominated by Red Oak, Rhododendron and Azalea, and White Pine – especially White Pine. But it’s the Red (and White) Oaks that will be the objects of our attention the next few weeks as they are currently under massive assault by a Gypsy Moth outbreak.

Now is the right time to spray Dimilin, as Gypsy Moths are in the early instar stages of development where they are most vulnerable to the chitin synthesis action of a growth regulating pesticide like Dimilim. In less than a month the moth will be in the 5th and 6th instar stages just before pupation, and the growth-regulating action of Dimilin will be much diminished. Now is also the best time to spray BT, and BT is also not recommended for use on Gypsy Moth control beyond the 3rd instar stage of development.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 5, 2005)

May 28, 1991

Sprayed more Dimilin today in the Concord area. We refused to spray one property because the Red Oak to be sprayed was too close to a brook. That was Gil’s decision, not the salesman’s. Given Gil’s brusque and macho manner, it was nice, and a bit surprising to me to see Gil’s sensitivity toward the environment. Leo is the same way, and this is difficult for me to process, as Leo is best caricatured by the Popeye character, “Bluto.” The Oak will have to be sprayed with BT, which is not toxic to certain aquatic Arthropods – Crayfish, for one.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 5, 2005)

May 29, 1991

Today is my only Uncle’s birthday. My Uncle loves his gigantic “Crack Willows” and his “California Maples.” He talks about them all the time. No amount of arguing with him, or even pictures of the trees with the correct names in dendrology books will convince him the trees are really Eastern Cottonwoods and Boxelders. His mind is made up, and that’s that. He works for General Motors, so now I’ve taken to calling his Chevy a “Ford.” Uncle Doug has a neighbor who also loves Boxelders. This blows my mind. Just what goes on in the mind of a person who becomes attached to a Boxelder? 

Sprayed the remains of a ¼ tank of Dimilin (150 gals). Sprayed two more tanks of BT around several summer cottages near a lake. I add a spreader/sticker formulation to each tank of spray material as an adjuvant for both Dimilim and BT. Another adjuvant (Spray-Aid ®) is sometimes added to adjust the pH of acidic water.

43 ½ Hrs this week. Week #2


----------



## Chucky (Apr 6, 2005)

June 1, 1991

Rain today – which means no spraying. Yesterday, Leo became slightly intoxicated from the fallout of spraying the insecticide/acaricide, Tempo ®. Tempo (Cyfluthrin) is a pyrethroid pesticide, which is the synthetic analogue of the naturally-occurring chemical, pyrethrin, which is extracted from Chrysanthemum flowers. The formulation we are using is an emulsifiable concentrate and carries a WARNING label. Leo was spraying for Deer Ticks, which carry Lyme Disease. He says he’s going to wear a face shield in the future. The funny thing about Leo is he's fairly safety conscience except he refuses to wear a hardhat, and he comes up with all manner of rationalizations for not needing one. Leo is my boss, so I'm not about to argue with him, but I notice he's always on the lookout for the pestiferous safety guy, who always manages to find fault with _something_ we're doing when he sneaks up on us at a job site.

Gil and I took down five large trees and cabled a split-crotch Maple. I took down one 80-foot Maple, and groundied for Gil the others. I don’t have climbers, so I had to rope up. Gil dropped the top out of an 80-foot White Pine and discovered there was a Raven’s nest in it (after the fact). There was much squawking and squealing when the top hit the ground. One chick lived! Gil took it home with him (he keeps birds). I somehow managed to drop the Stihl 020 AV from quite a ways up the tree, and amazingly, no damages. It even continued to cut straight. Can’t figure out how it got loose!


----------



## Chucky (Apr 6, 2005)

June 2, 1991

Sprayed again for Gypsy Moth. The outbreak was so bad last year that the tops of many conifers in the area are chewed off, and they don’t re-flush as the broad-leaved trees do. Especially susceptible conifers are Spruce and Hemlock. Thankfully, White Pine seems to be resistant to Gypsy Moth. It seems the most important pest of White Pine around here is White Pine Weevil. I notice a good share of them with multiple leaders. I wonder how the course of American history might have been changed had the Weevil been prevalent in the 1600s when White Pines were coveted by the British and French navies for their use as ship masts.

While White Pine Blister Rust was no doubt the most serious disease affecting White Pine for many years, it seems to have subsided, as I don’t see that many trees with the telltale whitish blistering on the trunks. The Hemlock Wooly Adelgid pest hasn’t reached New Hampshire yet, though I hear it’s now in parts of Massachusetts, having spread from a Connecticut infestation.

We are now using a mix of Dimilin and Tempo. Tempo is so highly concentrated that the label calls for just one ounce of the material per 100 gallons of water. Dimilin (a wettable powder) is far less concentrated and much less toxic, so it’s much safer to handle. We don’t (at least we _try _ not to) spray trees and shrubs in flower because Tempo is extremely toxic to bees.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 6, 2005)

June 3, 1991

Same-O. Had to cut the day short because of too much wind causing drift. We now start the day at 6:00 am. Met a customer who had worked with insecticides in a greenhouse – he lost his voice, and has no sense of taste.

Thinking of that poor guy with no voice, I’ve often wondered if pesticides were a factor in my father’s untimely death in his early fifties, when I was just nine years old. He had an experimental apple orchard in the St. Lawrence Valley of upstate New York, where he and his partner worked on developing apples trees hardy to Zone 3. My mother says she’d frequently see him walking around enshrouded by a thick chemical fog, pumping away with his hand applicator with no safety protection whatever. He got Hodgkins Disease (cancer of the lymph glands) and died within a year. 

Yet I’m not opposed to the use of the more toxic chemical pesticides as long as they’re used only as the last resort as part of an Integrated Pesticide Management program, and that the appropriate safety protection is worn by the applicator when applying them. Tempo, when used in concentrations according to the label, is far less toxic to humans than many of the formulations my father was likely to have been using in the 1950s and 60s. I’m sure he commonly used Organochlorines such as Chlordane and Lindane, various Arsenic-based fungicides, and Carbamates such Cabaryl in the more toxic formulations. Today, most of these pesticides have either been banned by the EPA, or re-classified to Restricted Use status.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 6, 2005)

June 4, 1991

Sprayed Tempo and Dimilin for Gypsy Moth.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 6, 2005)

June 5, 1991

Ditto.


47 Hrs this week. Week #3


----------



## Chucky (Apr 7, 2005)

June 8, 1991

Laconia, New Hampshire is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here. Where are all the bars and beer drinkers around here? The population of my hometown was about 700, and the average number of taverns required to service us hovered around four. Laconia has a population 20 times that of my hometown, and as far as I can tell, and I’ve done a lot of scouting, it has _one_ bar – and it sucks! I realize the economy is down and people are retrenching, but this is crazy. And New Hampshire has this odd law whereby if you intend to leave the bar with your drink and go sit at a table, your drink needs to be _escorted_ to the table by a waitress! It’s true – you are not allowed to carry a beer from the bar to a table – in the _Live Free or Die_ State!

So I’ve continued to scout out Laconia and its environs on my rollerblades and I finally found a halfway decent watering hole three miles down the road toward Weirs Beach – a semi-biker bar. The other night it amused me to no end toward last call when everybody was drunk to see these big biker-types having to have their beers escorted around the bar. Anyway, I caught myself a respectable beer buzz, crawled on my mountain bike and wobbled and weaved home, as you especially don’t want to be from New York driving drunk in New Hampshire. 

More spraying today. Spraying is where the money is, so most other tree work is put on the back burner until the narrow spraying window closes later this month. Leo remarked that lately he’d noticed an “official” looking green car that was behaving suspiciously. Yes, the dreaded state pesticide safety control officer had marked us. The SPSCO is to the pesticide sprayer, as a game officer is to the hunter/fisherman. You must be properly credentialed, and you must at all times strictly follow all the rules and regulations to a tee, lest you wind up in jail, or at least with a hefty fine. Spraying when the wind is too high, thus causing drift, is akin to exceeding your bag limit – and then you’re busted! 

It was enough for Leo that he had to keep a constant lookout for the niggling company safety guy, now he had to be on constant alert for the pesticide cop!


----------



## Chucky (Apr 8, 2005)

June 9, 1991

The usual Gypsy Moth spray day today – with one exception. It seems some holes in the bark of a small Littleleaf Linden on an important client’s property had attracted the salesman’s attention, thus demanding immediate treatment. So out of the far recesses of the supply barn I dug out an old mothballed backpack sprayer and proceeded to concoct, as per the salesman’s instructions, the textbook remedy to combat the suspected perpetrators of these holes. The remedy, consisting mostly of Dursban ®, I deduced was indeed the correct control measure for boring insects. However, I wasn’t exactly sure how well this particular remedy would work for – sapsuckers. 

I went ahead and sprayed the tree anyway.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 9, 2005)

June 10, 1991

Sprayed today for Gypsy Moth with Dimilin/Tempo. Every spray job is now a combination of Dimilin and Tempo. It is my opinion that this is not good IPM. Dimilin works, there’s no question, but just not as fast and quite as thoroughly as Tempo works. Dimilin alone takes just a few days to work because the larval instars have to undergo another molt to the next instar stage for it to be effective. Our salesman/manager doesn’t seem to have the patience for this – he wants immediate results. The same goes for BT. Meanwhile, the drift from spraying a broad-spectrum pesticide like Tempo inevitably gets into flowers, which are visited by bees. Tempo is highly toxic to bees and the bees bring the toxins back to the hive with them. It seems such a waste that so much time, money, and energy is invested in IPM research, and the knowledge gained from such research is not practiced in the field.

But I don’t completely blame the salesman/manager. As a business, the company must never lose sight of its bottom line – profit. The salesman/manager is merely satisfying the wants of its customers, or the customers will do their business elsewhere. When the customer sees legions of icky, squirming caterpillars defoliating their prized Oak trees, they want action – quick action. They want to see, moments after we sent 60-foot spray columns of death spray into the canopy of their trees, a rain of writhing caterpillars falling to their deaths. _Quick knockdown effect_, as it’s said in the industry.

I see this attitude on the part of the homeowner as a reflection of Modern Society, wherein everything requires a quick and easy fix. Nobody has the patience for anything that doesn’t satisfy his instant needs. The same impatient attitude is seen among homeowners dealing with weeds. Roundup ® (Glysophate), like Dimilim and BT, is very specific in its mode of action, and has a very low mammalian toxicity level, yet it doesn’t seem to work fast enough for the homeowner. No, the homeowner wants that pernicious dandelion weed dead _tomorrow_. Enter Diquat, which is orders of magnitude more toxic than Glysophate. A few targeted sprays of Diquat on the offending weed, and Presto! – da weed be gone! 

Enough criticizing for the night. I’ve grown weary dragging miles of hose and I’ve temporarily lost sight all the positives of this great and noble profession. I’m barely three weeks in the field and I’m already becoming disgruntled! I really need to get into the trees more soon. Meanwhile, I’ve got to get some sleep, as we’ve got some major hose to drag tomorrow.


----------



## MasterBlaster (Apr 9, 2005)

MasterBlaster said:



> Cool. Le'see whar this goes.




Hmmmmm....


----------



## Chucky (Apr 10, 2005)

June 11, 1991

I suspect many good-sized tree companies get the gist of their business from huge, half-page ads in the Yellow Pages first, and word-of-mouth second. Not our company. We could easily afford over-sized Yellow Pages ads, but it’s not the company’s style. Under the category “Tree Services” in most Yellow Pages in the country our company name is barely more than a line, and not even in bold print. Our business comes mostly from repeat customers and from its reputation for providing high-quality tree work. There is a very low tolerance toward sloppiness here, and our customers are almost invariably wealthy homeowners with fat bank accounts. 

But when the economy is down as it is now, I give Chris, the salesman/manager for our company a lot of credit for keeping the work coming. An unctuous, fast-talking tree salesman can BS the typical client to a degree, but most of our clients tend to be well-educated and are apt to see through the transparency of a slick sales pitch. Chris has both a solid background in arboriculture, _and_ the ability to schmooze, so he _engages_ the customer, summoning as much tree and landscape knowledge as he’s able to muster as he tours the property with the customer. Most people are very prideful of their properties and love to showcase their grounds to admiring strangers. And Chris is more than happy to accommodate such people, all the while complimenting the customer on such things as how the customer had so artfully juxtaposed the delicacy of his white-flowering perennials with his rhododendron planting. Meanwhile, Chris is pointing out a number of deficiencies in the trees on the property, whose role, if maintained in an aesthetically pleasing condition, is to provide an important structural backdrop to the property owner’s landscaping masterpiece. 

The pump broke on the spray rig and we spent three hours trying to fix it, with no results. So we got a reprieve from spraying today and Gil and I took down two large Hemlocks next to a camp. This “camp,” nestled on the beautiful shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, has a _boathouse_ that is bigger than any house I’ll ever live in. The job was bid at 18 man-hours, and the work order showed a $950 billing, but due to Gil’s extraordinary climbing skills, we managed to complete the job in only five hours – and I only had to file his cheap Poulan trimming saw once. Ordinarily, Chris, the salesman is pretty close on his bids, but I think because the customer let us chip the trees into the woods, thus saving us a dump run, we came out pretty far ahead with this customer.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 11, 2005)

June 12, 1991

Spray day – nothing noteworthy.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 11, 2005)

June 13, 1991 (Saturday)

Volunteered to work today. At $10/hour, the overtime should gross me around $500 for the week.

Chris, the salesman/manager, and I sprayed today. Chris is actually a pretty good dude, despite all the dumping on him Gil, Leo, and I do behind his back. We got talking and he seemed impressed by my knowledge of insects, disease, and dendrology. We studied these subjects at school, and I’d studied trees and botany on my own since I was just a kid, so it shouldn’t have come as much a surprise that I was educated on tree-related subjects. Chris said that it’s not unusual for tree companies to hire people right off the street, people with no more knowledge of trees than a nun has of diesel mechanics. A few of these people, who are ambitious and have a genuine love for tree work, will remain in arboriculture and become successful, but the vast majority of them won’t. In fact, even the majority of those who train in arboriculture don’t stay with it long. 

Chris graduated from the same college I’m now attending, but the Urban Tree Management program I’m currently in was not in existence when he graduated in the late ‘70s. He learned arboriculture on the job, and he’s a real company man. He told me I could be a sales rep with the company in three months. I figure I’d be better of sticking with my plan to get a B.S. in Urban Forestry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. My ambition has always been Municipal Arboriculture ever since the City Forester of Burlington, Vermont gave a talk to our class at college last semester. 

Burlington is a Tree City USA and it has a very strong forestry department, partly because the department is _separate_ from the DPW, and partly because the community prides itself on its trees. The City Forester seemed really enlightened and enthusiastic about his job, and he gave a great presentation to our class. In most cities when the economy takes a dip, it is the Forestry Department that is first to take a hit. Not in Burlington. Here the City Forester has so much power, any excavation near street trees must be done _under_ the tree roots, not through them. I _like_ that kind of power. 


54 Hrs this week. Week #4


----------



## Chucky (Apr 12, 2005)

June 15, 1991

Gypsy Moth spray Day.

Harry showed up on the job site today, after just visiting John, who works for his father’s tree service in Lebanon, NH. Harry is an instructor in the Urban Tree Management program at the college I’m attending, and each summer he spends time meeting with students on the job during their summer externships to see how they’re doing. He also helps run the school sugar bush and brought with him a fresh gallon of his maple syrup. Though Harry’s extra-extra dark maple syrup has the looks and consistency of a paving material, it sure is good!

I took Harry on a small tour of the Lake’s region of New Hampshire and we checked out New Hampshire’s champion White Oak, which is just a mile up the road from the apartment. The tree sits next to a pond back from the road a bit among other trees, and as White Oaks don’t grow so tall as they do thick and wide spreading, passersby barely notice it. But once you get out of the car and walk up to it, you begin to recognize how truly magnificent a specimen it is, with its 19-foot girth and 140-foot crown spread. Unfortunately, it’s beginning to show signs of decline.

Harry’s a real cool, mellow guy, with a great appreciation and infectious enthusiasm for trees. I wouldn’t say Harry is anti-technology, but in the natural vs. synthetic debate, he clearly sits on the left. For example, he’d prefer to fertilize a tree using the drill hole method with a power auger and compost instead of liquid injecting the tree’s root zone with a synthetic, inorganic fertilizer. I see nothing wrong with that attitude, but if I had access to a spray rig and a needle, there’s no doubt I’d be pogo stickin’, and not drillin’ and fillin’. And I could plainly see that Harry wasn’t too excited about the spraying aspect of tree work. Rather than being on the ground looking up, I’m sure he’d much rather be in the tree looking down. Can’t say as I blame him.

Later we ate some tamales and had too many tecate beers at a Mexican restaurant, chewed the fat awhile, and crashed. Tomorrow, Harry is headed to the Wolfeboro office to see my roommate, Brian, and then he’s off to Portland, Maine to see Travis. I got thinking about my ambition to become a municipal arborist, which seems like a good gig, but thinking of Harry on his tree traveling adventures, educational arboriculture can't be such a bad gig either!


----------



## Chucky (Apr 13, 2005)

June 16, 1991

Four years in high school on the track team as a pole vaulter and discus thrower, weight training daily, lots of rope work, and 30-50 miles a week roadwork – and not _one_ of those days matched the workout I got today. 

But it was worth it, because I got lots of climbing in! Gil and I pruned eleven Red Oaks, two Apple trees, two European Mountainashes, and topped an Aspen (not me). The salesman bid the job for 16 man-hours, but we were lucky to finish it in 22. I did 3 tree-to-tree transfers in the Oaks. I keep forgetting to make myself a 15-foot rope with a clip to help me get around the canopy better. It will come in real handy, especially in more wide-spreading trees such as White Oaks, which are plentiful in New Hampshire. Gil uses one all the time when pruning.

The chipper started to bog down. “Dull blades,” Gil said. I asked Gil if the Oak pieces we put through it might have been too big. Gil scanned the area behind the chipper where I was working. “Where’s the rake?” 

“Uhhh….”

Gil was partially eaten by a chipper once. And he showed me the scars to prove it. Luckily a co-worker was right there to hit the reverse bar, but it ate his arm and shoulder right up to his neck before it spit him back out. I can’t believe how tough this guy is. He also was a chronic alcoholic and used to go up into the trees in the morning still drunk from the night before. Every day with his lunch he packs a couple NA’s. This guy's a freaking _grandfather_, and he still climbs like a monkey!


----------



## MasterBlaster (Apr 13, 2005)

Uh, I wouldn't go too wacky here-uh, eh?


----------



## Chucky (Apr 13, 2005)

No wacky-tabacky. Company randomed us.


----------



## MasterBlaster (Apr 13, 2005)

I din nut say that, laddie.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 14, 2005)

Then what _is_ you saying, son?


----------



## MasterBlaster (Apr 14, 2005)

"Gil was partially eaten by a chipper once. And he showed me the scars to prove it. Luckily a co-worker was right there to hit the reverse bar, but it ate his arm and shoulder right up to his neck before it spit him back out. I can’t believe how tough this guy is. He also was a chronic alcoholic and used to go up into the trees in the morning still drunk from the night before. Every day with his lunch he packs a couple NA’s. This guy's a freaking grandfather, and he still climbs like a monkey!"



_That's_ a tad wacky, Pa.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 14, 2005)

Wacky, MB, but true.

I calls ‘em as I see ‘em,
I leave no room for doubt;
If you ain’t believin’,
You’ve drunk too much stout.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 14, 2005)

June 17, 1991

This is Bike Week in Laconia, and the bikes are already starting to roll into the New Hampshire Lakes region. Yesterday we were lumbering down the road about 30 mph with a full load of chips when two kids on crotch rockets recklessly whizzed by us just before a blind curve in the road. I looked back in truck’s the side mirror and saw two bikers tooling along behind us on Harley’s with their middle fingers clearly extended toward the two kids. They finally passed us with an appreciative wave and a nod. 

Today Gil and I sprayed for “deer ticks” around several summer cottages on Lake Winnepesaukee. This is a watershed – no spraying within 50 feet of the lake, and no higher than 6 feet. How _convenient_, I thought, that the broad-spectrum pesticide Tempo also controls _mosquitoes_ – mosquito spraying is illegal (at least by us) in New Hampshire.

Replaced the chipper blades (Gil did) and did plumbing work on the spray rig.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 17, 2005)

June 18, 1991

My roommate Brian, who works at the Wolfeboro office, is struggling a bit. Brian hails from a small town in the northern Adirondacks, and like many towns in the six-million acre Adirondack park, its economy booms during the summer, and busts the other eight months of the year. My impression is Brian entered the Urban Tree Management program not so much because of a genuine interest in trees, but because the college is local to him and the program boasts a very high job placement rate in the industry. 

Whatever the reason, Brian is a UTMer, and as there’s only a couple dozen of us UTMers on campus, and because all other students at the college regard us the lowliest of the low, we stick together, like an ugly ol’ mass of bagworms. So when anybody struggles in the classroom – or in the tree – they always have support from the rest of us, no matter how stupid or clutzy they might be.

Brian is neither stupid nor clutzy, but the other morning he must have appeared to be both, as he described to me how he spent the better part of an hour attempting to back the chipper up a driveway. Then later in the day, in the backyard of the same customer, he whipped it out and took a whiz on the customer’s lawn – a spectacle the customer clearly was not happy with as he sat watching the action through his picture window.

And Brian works under the tutelage of this guy named Lenny. Lenny, from the impressions I get from Gil and Leo, is not the brightest bulb in the box. But I guess he’s one bodacious climber and hose dragger, which is why I assume the Wolfeboro office keeps him. Anyway, Gil says Lenny lives for takedowns, and that he once saw Lenny sprint toward a tree with his spurs on, take his first step four feet up the trunk, and literally run up the tree with no lanyard, but with just his hands grabbing the trunk! I find this hard to believe, but Brian attests it’s true – the guy is crazy! And I’m just wondering _where_ the company safety guy is when all this takes place? Well _I_ know where he is – sneaking up on us, pointing at a misplaced traffic cone in the road. 

Over four weeks, and not a single safety meeting by the safety guy. But I’m sort of glad. Despite certain ANSI transgressions that Gil and Leo tend to commit, I’m completely confident working with these two men.

Sprayed for Gypsy Moth today. Spray season is beginning to wind down. Larvae are beginning to pupate.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 22, 2005)

June 19, 1991

Examined a declining Littleleaf Linden for girdling roots today. I dug around the side of the trunk with no flare, but found no girdling roots. The tree reputedly has had borer problems, but the company research lab was unable to determine the identity of the pest. I’ve noticed in the Syracuse area that Littleleaf Lindens sometimes have a tendency to send up much sucker growth from the base of the trunks. I’m sure this is a response to some kind of stress, but I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly what _kind_ of stress. Littleleaf Lindens tend to be planted mostly as street trees in Syracuse so I’m thinking the stress is probably induced by the usual inauspicious soil-related problems often associated with street trees, but I can’t be sure. 

Tree disease diagnosis is such an inexact science, and when I reflect on the vastly complex interaction of an intricate biological system such as a tree with another intricate biological system of a pest, and then throw in such confounding physical factors such as climate, weather, pollution, soils, and countless other factors, it’s easy to see why disease diagnosis is trees can be so confounding. Mathematicians, physicists, and engineers have it easy. The systems they study are relatively cut and dried, and are infinitely less complex than biological systems. They simply look up the mathematical formula in a book relevant to the problem, and apply it. Try finding a simple “formula” for what’s causing the decline of a Maple when clear signs of a pest aren’t evident. Diagnostic arboriculture, like medicine, is as much an art as it is a science – it requires much knowledge and experience – and sometimes a little luck.

We also pruned some large Maples and an enormous Red Oak. Thenceforward, it looks like all the tree work we’ll be doing out of the Meredith office will be done with climbing gear. The Brookline office just expropriated the bucket truck for the remainder of the summer, and justly so, as they just won a big line clearance bid. Of course Gil and Leo are crestfallen, but I’m elated, as I’ll now get the opportunity for more climbing!


----------



## Chucky (Apr 23, 2005)

45 Hrs this week. Week #5


June 22, 1991

What is it with these biker types? It was Friday night at Weirs Beach, where thousands of longhaired, leather-clad, and black sunglass-bespectacled Harley-Davidson motorcyclists were congregated. It’s the height of Bike Week, and dressed in black woolen bicycling shorts, a “save the whales” T-shirt, and an oversized Styrofoam helmet, I proudly pedaled up the main drag on my shiny, new, state-of-the-art Schwinn Cimarron mountain bike. 

I can’t overstate the fact that no one at Weirs Beach Friday night was impressed with my new bicycle, or me, for that matter. That both the bewhiskered, tatooed biker types, and I, would easily stand out in a crowd, is about all we had in common. The fact that my bicycle lacked the capacity to breech an 80-decibel noise barrier, generally looked uncool, and needed to actually be _pedaled_, distanced me significantly from my two-wheeler brethren. However, I eventually found my way to the bar and it seems we had a common denominator after all – beer. Ensued were several rounds of pitchers of beer, numerous episodes of biker women titty-flashing, and a few puffs of.… Forgotten by the bikers was my dorky bicycling attire, and it was a bodacious party the whole weekend long. 

An exhausting, 12-hour day. Leo, Gil, and I training pruned several large, medium, and small apple trees. A couple were close to 30-feet high. Much watersprout pruning and pruning to maximize light intake. It’s surprising how much growth one can remove from an apple tree and still leave enough growth to sustain the tree (at least we hope). This is a bad time of the year, by the way, to prune apple trees, or most trees for that matter.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 27, 2005)

June 23,1991

Today Gil injection fertilized, and Leo and I pruned some large Maples. Leo installed one cable. Leo, Gil’s and my foreman, is very knowledgeable in arboriculture, despite his brutish, unkempt appearance. When I see children cower in fear, and dogs turn tail and run, I know Leo is coming.

Leo attended a high school with a forestry major, and then went on to graduate from the Stockbridge School at UMass, majoring in arboriculture. I’ve really got to watch myself when I start pontificating on tree-related matters because he’s quick call me on my tendency to use pretzel logic to justify conclusions on things I really know little about. Leo’s a no-nonsense kind of guy, and he knows his trees, but I have a feeling he’ll never go beyond production tree work, not that that's a bad thing. He shuns sales positions because he doesn’t like to “bull???? people,” and he dislikes management because he doesn’t like to “kiss ass.” I imagine Leo sometimes looks at me and thinks to himself: “boy, this dude is perfect for sales or management.”

It was a near perfect day today pruning the Maple trees. Hanging out and swinging around in trees all day is a most excellent way to make a living.


----------



## Chucky (Apr 27, 2005)

June 24, 1991

Rain all day. Four large Yellow Birch takedowns, and I didn’t do much except get drenched. The Birches were hazard trees in rest areas along I-93 just south of the famous “Old Man of the Mountain” rock formation, which is the state emblem of New Hampshire. 

Gil pieced down the trees, while the State had a crew that came along and chipped the remains. I was ground man all day, but that entailed mostly just tending Gil’s saw and ropes – no dragging, which at least would have kept me warm in the soaking rain. 

I might have asked Gil to get in on the takedown action, but I still don’t have any climbing spurs, and I wasn’t about to borrow his again. Gil has telephone pole spurs, and they’re worn down to projections about as wood-piercing as a pair of thumbtacks!


----------



## Chucky (Apr 28, 2005)

June 25, 1991

Four takedowns, ten prunings, and three cables today. Two of the trees were easy drops for Leo, the other two Gil pieced down. Gil and Leo pruned most the other trees while I drug brush, and two of the cables I did myself (of course with Gil’s help sending up the drill and tool bucket). Leo had his brand new 150’ Samson bright orange and white climbing line today, after finally retiring his old one that he had so long. Apparently his old line was now relegated to tag line status, but Gil, after inspecting it, later told me he wouldn’t trust the ragged old thing to lower a _toothpick_ out of a tree. I wonder myself how Leo managed to use it so long. Leo must weigh about 230. I also deadwooded a very tall White Pine today, and I see now why Leo likes 150’ climbing ropes!

For certain cabling jobs, I kind of favor high-tensile cables with pre-formed cable grips, but the company doesn’t use these at all. At least they use eyebolts, which go all the way through the tree and are secured with a large washer and bolt. At school we did some cabling using lag screws, which only go a few inches into the tree trunk. I think lag screws are much inferior to eyebolts. One day walking in the woods at school I looked up into a tree that I’d cabled with lag screws a few months earlier, and there was the lag screw – dangling at the bottom end of the failed cable.

I’m beginning to find that a wooden extension ladder is very handy to get me within reach of a first limb instead of body thrusting 30 feet. Or if the limb’s not within easy reach, I can use a pole saw and place a monkey’s fist over the limb, and pull it down. Gil makes his own version of a monkey fist in about 5 seconds. He does it so fast I can’t make out how he does it.

I keep putting off buying a pair of climbers. Though takedowns are not very profitable for the company, it seems we’ll still have our share of them since spray season is just about over, the economy is down, and preferred customers often call for them. Spraying, fertilizing, pruning, and cabling is where the money is for our company, and our salespeople seem particularly adept at selling cabling jobs, even in trees that may not really need them. I can more easily condone salespeople pushing fertilization on trees that may not really need it. It’s amazing how rejuvenating and invigorating fertilizer is to declining trees. As we travel from job to job, Gil often points out beautiful, healthy trees that he has fertilized with the company’s own brand of fertilizer – a 29-9-9 synthetic/organic slow-release formulation – that he says looked spare and chlorotic before fertilizing. 

OK, Gil didn’t exactly use the word “chlorotic” – I sort of injected the word in after he said “pale.”


----------



## Chucky (May 1, 2005)

June 26, 1991

“When in doubt, Sevin in June.”

I’m not sure exactly where I’d heard that maxim, probably from Grover Katzman, the guy who started the Urban Tree Management program at college back in the early eighties. But it pretty much sums up the “see and spray” mindset that’s so prevalent in the tree care industry, despite scientific advancements in pest management funded by millions of dollars of research that demonstrably prove that pests in ornamental trees can effectively be managed to acceptable levels using integrated pest management. 

IPM has for years been proven in the far larger realm of agriculture, and I can’t see any reason it can’t be successfully applied in urban forestry. Except, of course, for the fact the field is crawling with hacks.

So this morning when I looked at our work order, I couldn’t help thinking of “when in doubt, Sevin in June.” And today I filled the spray tank with a Tempo mix and we set off on a crisp, beautiful New England morning to perform repeat sprays for Gypsy Moths in Oaks where caterpillars were still chewing and wriggling after our first spray.

Today it was Leo and I spraying, and as much as I enjoy Leo’s company, he wasn’t no fun to spray with. I quickly learned where Leo tended to slack a little in certain minor areas of safety in the climbing aspects of tree work, he more than enough made up for it in the spray arena. 

I had to actually get out a grease gun and _grease _ all the fittings on the spray rig. Then, after each spray, the manner in which I wound up the hose on the spool, I was soon to learn, was completely unacceptable. With Gil, you just hit the button, and simply let the hose feed around the spool from left to right, and back and forth, and so on, till its all wound up. A little sloppy, but effective. So I wound up the hose as I normally did with Gil, and I looked over to see Leo’s face all twisted up with horror, as if I’d just set the spray rig on fire. He thereupon proceeded to instruct me on the “proper” method of spooling up the hose, and with great seriousness and complete concentration, he carefully guided the spray hose onto the spool with deadly accuracy and precision, until the final result looked just like factory specs.

So for the rest of the day I did my best to properly wind up the spray hose after each job, but as I glanced over at Leo’s critical gaze while winding, I could clearly see that Leo thought me as an abject failure at this task. 

No matter. Months ago I’d formulated a hypothesis that tree people aren’t quite right in the head to begin with, so Leo’s over the top fastidiousness in spray hose winding was just another strange behavioral quirk that I’d come to expect from this strange breed of humans that take to trees.


----------



## Chucky (May 17, 2005)

48 Hrs this week. Week #6

I quit my job as a long-haul trucker to go back to school for urban tree management. I started in the freight-moving business delivering next-day airmail in a pickup truck, moved to delivering furniture in a straight truck, and wound up driving big truck over-the-road. There’s a certain romance in being a long-haul trucker – and there’s many a country music tune that will tell you so. But after a couple years driving big rig I’d come to realize the “romance” part of the job was really a myth. In reality, it was hard, tiring work, and for the most part you were treated like dirt by the dock workers at the shippers and receivers, and the four-wheelers we shared the road with generally despised us.

So it was time to move on and train for a job I thought I’d truly enjoy – tree climbing. And to me the notion of swinging from a rope from the tops of big trees with a chainsaw dangling from my saddle was all as much romantic, and even more exciting and swashbuckling than driving big rig. And now that I’ve reached my goal, after a few hard days on the job doing tree work, I’m already beginning to think there’s no such thing as the “perfect” career. 

And Gil and Leo aren’t helping me feel any better about it. Every once in a while, especially after a long day, Gil will talk about what he thinks he should have been doing instead of tree work. And Leo hints about how he’d like to go back to doing factory work at Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he’s from (that’ll never happen). Gil’s brother is a truck driver, and Gil thinks I’m crazy to go from driving truck to tree climbing. But Gil doesn’t know what it’s really like to drive big truck. 

It’s true that tree work is extremely hard work, and can be quite unpleasant, but when I really think of it, isn’t any job a pain in the ass? I’m well aware of the “grass is always greener” cliché. And it’s a myth, too. The way I see it, try to find a job you’re at least moderately interested in, and pursue it. You’ll never be completely happy with any job; that’s life.

I like to imagine myself in the future, with a kid on my knee, telling him stories. If I were, say, an accountant or a lawyer, I’d have to make up stories to excite him. A tree worker would never have to make up a story.


Today I pruned a large Oak. Transferred to another leader in the tree via an old cable (tightrope walking). Leo pruned a declining Red Maple while I dragged brush. 

Fertilized (hydraulic) for the first time. Injection sites are spaced about 3 feet apart 1/3 the distance from the drip line to just beyond the drip line. The big boss wanted all the fertilizer used up, so I removed the fertilizing needle, installed the spray gun, and fertilized the lawn.

Sprayed a Weeping European White Birch for Gypsy Moth, though a little late in the year for that – Gypsy Moth are pupating now. Used Tempo.

Sprayed a Weeping Willow for the imported Willow Leaf Beetle with Tempo, as recommended by the company research lab. The Larvae skeletonize and the adults eat whole portions of the leaves. 3-4 generations per year.

Was a very hot, humid day. Got mild heat stroke.


----------



## Chucky (May 21, 2005)

June 30, 1991

The bothersome, and generally useless company safety guy showed up on the jobsite this morning. His appearance couldn’t have been more ill-timed. Luckily, hardhatless Leo was still on the ground, and his uncanny bat-sense homed in immediately on the approach of danger, and by the time the safety guy had swung out of his pickup, Leo was standing there looking thoroughly safety-prepared, in his ill-fitting hardhat loosely cocked on his gnarly head. 

Unfortunate for me, I had parked the truck, and when I peered down from near the top of a large Oak tree, the safety guy was pointing at the wheel of the chipper. No wheel chock. So I had to rappel down the tree, put a wheel chock behind the chipper wheel, and body thrust all the way back up the tree.

What makes the safety guy such an object of Gil’s and Leo’s contempt and derision is his utter lack of practical experience in tree work. At one time, many years before he was ensconced in his current position as safety officer, I heard he did some logging. So he presumably knows about the generalities of chainsaw safety, tree felling, PPE, etc. But it seems clear to me that’s about where his knowledge of tree work stops – abruptly. When any safety-related issues involve the *supraterra* – the guy’s a total dud. It’s all what he’s read somewhere in a trade magazine he picked up at on a coffee table at office. 

To wit: Last semester, when the safety guy appeared at school at a tree climbing lab to give a demonstration – of all things – the use of a speed line, he nearly killed my classmate, Tim. Tim is the most talented climber in our class and is almost fearless. Tim dropped a chunk of wood attached to a loop runner over 10 feet before the speed line stopped its fall, and slid down the line toward the truck. I really didn’t notice how hard it shook the tree, and shook Tim, because Tim is a staid, low-key, type person, and he managed to save grace and hold to the swinging tree and hide his anger at what had just happened to him, probably not to embarrass the safety guy. But when I saw him later he was still seething with anger when he described the violence with which that falling log had shaken the tree he was in. Little did I know that later that summer I’d be up against the very same safety guy – on the actual job! 


Recovered from the heat from yesterday only to face another stifling hot, humid day. The thermometer broke 90 degrees. Drank at least a gallon of water during the day. The Brush Bandit was in the shop, so we had to use an old, dull drum chipper all day that the line clearance guys had put out of commission last year. After I got done with the Oak, Leo and Gil refused to deal with the _chipper from hell_, so they did all the pruning and I dragged and chipped. As usual, Gil and Leo like to see me do things the “hard way” (like they did) until I learnt the right way, so it didn’t take me long to realize that you don’t “feed” pieces into a drum chipper.

Between the safety guy, the drum chipper, and the heat, I did much reflecting today on the merits of the practice of arboriculture at the production level today.


----------



## Chucky (May 22, 2005)

June 1, 1991

Sprayed five or six White Birch trees for Birch Leaf Miner with Orthene. No signs of Bronze Birch Borer.

Fertilized (liquid) several Maple trees. Annual application rate is 25 gallons of material per 1000 square feet of root zone area. This amounts to 2.8 lbs. of nitrogen per 1000 square feet.

We also did a couple of “biennial” applications. This is done by simply holding the injection probe in the ground twice as long as normal. I’m not sure if this is really a good practice, or not. Somehow, it doesn’t _seem_ right.

I find while injection fertilizing, much of the liquid material spouts up from injection hole and onto the ground, and after a few days the lawn under the trees turns into a pattern of round, dark green patches. Curiously, Gil tells me a surprising number of customers like their new polka-dotted lawn. Apparently it’s indicative to them that the fertilizer is doing its job.

Our last job was fertilizing a large, old American Elm in downtown Concord. The owner of this beautiful tree holds it very dear to him. He’s had its trunk injected with the fungicide Arbotect as a safeguard against Dutch Elm disease every three years. I’m told this is a $900 procedure. The salesman says an Arbotect application on this tree was once delayed to the fourth year, and the tree began to flag. Fortunately, the owner was vigilant and immediately had the flagging branches properly pruned and the tree treated before it was too late to save the tree. [A year later I watched the demise of numerous elms on the UMASS campus that began flagging and were not attended to immediately. The disease had spread so fast, they were beyond saving by the end of the season.] Anyway, the Elm is in robust health, with not even a sign of Wetwood. 

I’m inspired to see the efforts the owner put forth to preserve this magnificent tree. It’s hard for me to explain the deep respect and kinship I feel toward trees. Grand, stately specimens that defy the ravages of time, and survive to grow tall and broad, and age gracefully as they watch over us as we do the same. Only we do so smaller and faster, like the ants that scurry under our feet.


----------



## Chucky (Jul 18, 2005)

July 2, 1991

Sprayed White Birch trees for Birchleaf Miner with Orthene today. Liquid injection fertilised two large White Oaks and a small Bartlett Chestnut tree. The Bartlett Chestnut is supposedly a blight-resistant hybrid of Castanea grandidentata and C. mollissima that I’m guessing was developed at the original Bartlett research laboratory in Stamford, Connecticut. 

Given that the American Chestnut and the Chinese Chestnut have had millions of years to evolve independently since their last common ancestor, and hence many new genes would be introduced into the genome of the F1 generation progeny of a cross between the two trees, I’m not at all surprised that the hybrid Bartlett Chestnut has yielded good resistance to Chestnut Blight. But all this genetic diversity in the hybrid is a double-edged sword. It also means most other characteristics of the American Chestnut will also be altered. So it’s extremely unlikely the mature specimen of this new hybrid will resemble anything like the great American Chestnut, just as American Elm crosses with resistant Asiatic species will similarly never achieve the classic deliquescent habit of the American Elm.

If this first F1 generation hybrid Chestnut is fertile, then genetic segregation will occur and the progeny of the F2 generation will show great genetic variation among the progeny. But you have to wait several years until all these progeny are mature to see which are desirable, if any. Then if you’re lucky, you might have one that fairly closely resembles an American Chestnut tree while at the same time being blight-resistant, but the problem is it’s progeny won’t breed true. The only way to get it to breed true, is to backcross it perhaps several times to an American Chestnut in order to finally “fix” it so it both looks like an American Chestnut and is resistant to blight.

So we’re talking a few hundred years to breed a resistant American Chestnut tree and this is exactly why almost NOBODY pursues a graduate degree in tree breeding, and thus we will never get a blight-resistant tree like we will get, say, a wilt-resistant tomato. 

So breeding a Chestnut Blight-resistant American Chestnut is impractical. BUT, we still have the good old mass-selection route whereby a la Luther Burbank we simply allow trees to breed freely and let nature take its course. We wait until perhaps a cosmic ray randomly strikes the DNA of a Chestnut tree, altering its sequence of genes such that it codes for a protein that confers resistance to the blight. But then we have to wait several years to discover that this tree miraculously made it to maturity. And then there’s still no guarantee that this tree will breed true, but at least it can be cloned like most other landscape trees in order to preserve the genetic integrity of its parent.

I guess what I’m getting at is I’m confidant that only technique to bring back our trees that have been decimated by alien pestilence is the new biotechnological gene-insertion techniques that have recently shown such promise in the agricultural realm. These techniques are controversial, but I’m convinced with time and refinement, biotechnological techniques will eventually be the answer to many of our agricultural and horticultural problems. 

Also sprayed a Weeping Crabapple tree with MPede Insecticidal soap with a backpack sprayer.

36 Hrs this week. Week #7


----------



## Chucky (Jul 19, 2005)

July 6, 1991

Today was absolutely indescribable. Today was one of those glorious days where one of us should have belonged on the front page of one those glossy tree climber magazines. We pruned big, mature White Pines with the beautiful backdrop of Lake Winnipesaukee all day long. Not easy work, but very satisfying.

I was thinking a lot of the word “vississitudes” today. I love this word, not only as the way the ssses beautifully summon forth between the teeth, but as I’ve discovered it’s the perfect word to describe the sometimes excruciatingly difficult, yet at the same time perversely enjoyable business of tree work. I’m thinking that this business of tree work is mostly for those who seek adventure, and not those who are looking for a job which offers fairly good pay, and at the same time, security.

I was thinking of my cousin, the accountant, who makes more than me, but who is not living ….


----------



## Chucky (Aug 16, 2005)

July 7, 1991

Pruning again, but instead of large, towering pines, we spent the day today in five large Red and White Oak trees. Twenty man-hours. 

Most pruning we do involves deadwooding everything broomstick handle thick and larger. For some reason (likely because most our customers are very rich) almost all the trees we prune are very large, mature trees, many of which are beginning to decline. The Red Oaks are much easier to prune than White Oaks because their crowns have a leader, unlike the wide-spreading White Oaks. In the White Oaks, as we don’t climb pruning jobs with spurs, both ends of our climbing lines are always in a crotch, and often we’re wishing we had a third end. These are extremely difficult trees to prune, and with no central leader to hang from it’s very hard to access the ends of these large, laterally spreading limbs. I had to shimmy up a couple of them on the bottom side lanyarded into to them because either there just wasn’t a suitable crotch to throw my monkey-fisted climbing line tail through, or the crotch was just too far to reach. My tie-in points on these two laterals actually would usually end up below me, which is not good. Because the boss wasn’t there, Gil actually put his telephone spurs on for a couple big laterals, and I really didn’t blame him. I honestly believe it’s folly for a salesman to put a pruning crew on a large White Oak without a bucket. 

Yet in a way I’m glad the Brookline line clearance crew had the bucket truck, because though the climbing was very hard, it afforded me some very valuable climbing experience. When I’m expected to do most of the groundwork, I jump at every climbing opportunity I can get.

One thing I’ve noticed in the tree is how handy 15-foot polesaws are. They have a lot of uses besides just pruning. Unless the tree is a takedown, I’ve learned my lesson to _never_ be in a tree canopy without a polesaw – they’re absolutely indispensable.


----------



## Chucky (Aug 16, 2005)

July 8, 1991

After shooting the breeze with my roommate Brian over a few beers the other night, I got thinking about an interesting statistical concept. I learned something I never knew about Brian, something that to me was startlingly intriguing: he’s the direct blood descendant of two generations of renowned treemen from northern New York. His grandfather had a long and storied career as a logger, and later retired as a logging superintendent in the great Adirondack lumberwoods. And his father was a legendary tree climber and later a beloved and respected forestry supervisor. He died an early and unlikely death in a car accident. 

Yet despite this legacy in Brian’s ancestry, he’ll be the first to admit that he just can’t climb trees. When he applied to college he wanted to become a surveyor. But they told him because of his limited mathematical background, he should not pursue such a career, so he wound up in Urban Tree Management, the field his father excelled so well in, but one in which Brian knew he would never excel in. 

I know Brian well; I know his work ethic and his sticktoitedness. He would have succeeded and excelled in surveying. The college advisors told him wrong. 

It’s called “regression to the mean,” the probabilistic concept I was thinking about. For those who aren’t familiar with statistics, it means whenever a person (or any biological form) has an uncommonly large, small, fast, smart, ugly, beautiful, strong, etc. offspring, the offspring of that superlative person will tend to revert back to normal. Such a statistical anomaly is a standout, an outlier, and the law of averages dictates that their offspring tend to revert back to normal. If you look at sports standouts, celebrities, scientific geniuses, or just about anybody who has stood out for uncommon achievement, with few exceptions, you never see their offspring achieve similar greatness.

And I’m the same as Brian, in that I’m the son of a man who excelled spectacularly in his career and who also died young, and whose career I doubt I could ever match. So I chose a career I was interested in, really enjoyed and could do well at. But because some know-nothing, second-guessing, administrative do-nothing convinced Brian he couldn’t pursue his goal, Brian wound up in a career he never wanted to be in.

Do what you love to do, follow your dreams, and never let anybody stand in your way. 

[Brian started a tree company in Tupper Lake, NY in 1993, but it went under after five years. He now owns a successful construction company in the same area.]

Pruned a Sugar, a Red, a Silver, and a Norway Maple today. We pruned them away from the roofs of two daycare centers and deadwooded them. Also installed three cables.


----------

