Pruned a dead Douglas fir.
Dead. Pruned it to customer specs.
The place smelled like money even as we drove up. Water view on a secluded cove. First thing i noticed was that the landscape lighting and irrigation were sunk into the poured aggregate driveway or placed into adjacent granite boulders with a coring drill.
Beaucoup dinero.
Parked the truck. Walking in one could see the roof was hand hammered copper. We crossed the slate and marble footbridge over the waterfall installation, past the outdoor fireplace on the portico to knock on the leaded glass door.
The place reeked not just of major money, but style.
The homeowner was still in his bathrobe, enjoying his first cup of coffee when we knocked. The first thing we discussed was the dead Douglas fir.
"My wife would like to make it look interesting."
The tree had lived a windblown life on an outcropping of rock. It had never become a proper specimen of the species. But it was the first tree you saw as you came down their driveway. And it was completely dead.
I'm new to my employer, so I just hung back a bit while my foreman discussed the dead fir with the owner.
"Nothing we can do will bring it back," my foreman stated, "It is as dead as can be."
"Yes," said the homeowner, "It is dead. But my wife would like to keep the interesting parts of it, so can you just clear the fluff off of it and let her see how it would look?"
My foreman grimmaced and fired up his 200t. Bombed the ends off of the lowest hanging branch, just overhead. Cut back to about 2" diameter on the end of the limb.
"OK, the fluff is gone," he says, "is that what you're looking for?"
"????! No! That looks like a plumbing fixture! She wants the tree to have, you know, an attractive appearance."
"The tree is dead! There is nothing we can do to make it come back. You should be requesting a removal, we can't improve a dead tree."
At this point I pulled my gear from the truck and started strapping it on.
My foreman just faded back and said, "OK, Eric will help you here."
"Would you like it to represent a level of Dante's Inferno," I said, climbing up, "Or more like Disney's Windy Hollow?"
"Oh, Windy hollow, windy hollow. Can you do that?"
"Of course," I lied, "But it will be a post mortum dressage. I will make it more Pope than Poe"
I took the top off, down to about 30 feet, treated the remaining limbs to my own artistic interpretation.
Took out that bit, left that bit - made a sculpture out of what remained.
Now it looks like a really big, dead bonsai.
Customer loves it. I mean really loves it.
Had me view the thing from the deck, the back patio, the driveway approach, all the time effusive about my dead tree pruning skill.
RedlineIt