We closed on our house in June, 2000, and a few days later a microburst blew apart the large tree off our bedroom. I did not, despite my propensity to draw significance from, oh, black crows blocking my path, gazing at me intently, see this unwelcome development as augury. Stuff happens.
Replacing the tree seemed essential, though, to restore the karmic balance to our new home. I chose a cimmaron ash because ash trees grow quickly, and indeed this one did.
Replacing the tree seemed essential, though, to restore the karmic balance to our new home. I chose a cimmaron ash because ash trees grow quickly, and indeed this one did.
A smart choice, at the time. "The Urban Tree Book," by Arthur Plotnik, published the same year, starts off with the ash. "One of Western civilization's most sacred trees. Among the oldest and largest trees of American towns."
Not anymore. Not so smart a choice, in retrospect.
The emerald ash borer showed up in Michigan in 2002, and soon thereafter a protracted battle began, with regular treatments of the tree fending off continual assaults by the pest. We spent many times more on whatever voodoo potion they shoot into ashes to kill the little green monsters than we had on the tree itself.
That seemed to work. For a few years, I held out hope that my tree, separated as it is from its fellow trees, might be one of the rare survivors. I told myself that the weird signs of distress — sending off all these ugly suckers that I dutifully trimmed back — were caused by the borer treatment itself, which was not always applied expertly, in my amateur opinion.
This past summer a large part of the crown never sprouted leaves. It looked dead. The arborist we consulted said, sure, he could pare back the dead crown, but the tree would look horrible and it would soon die anyway. Having previously condemned the majestic sugar maple in our front yard, I knew I could do this. But I did not plant the sugar maple. The ash I did. You're not supposed to outlive your trees — that's one purpose of planting them. To give shade to generations yet unborn. Not this tree. Since I am taking woodworking, I thought of saving the wood, kiln drying it, making a table, or a baseball bat. But a) that would take a lot of effort b) I'm not good enough to make a table or a baseball bat, yet and c) Owl Lumber sells ash wood.
The tree came down Monday. Part of me wish I'd fled to the gym, to not be party to the removal process. But it seemed smart to stick around while the work was being done. I put in my Airpods and listened to Mozart to drown out the screams of the chainsaws. Advanced Tree Care did the job quickly and efficiently — so efficiently they almost left without trimming another tree back off our roof, but I pointed out the lapse, and that it was in the contract, and a worker went up and took care of it. So I was glad I had stayed.
The space where the tree had been looks surprisingly big. The stump is there — I have to get some stump remover for it. Life is sometimes about planting and looking forward, sometimes about cutting down and letting go.
The emerald ash borer showed up in Michigan in 2002, and soon thereafter a protracted battle began, with regular treatments of the tree fending off continual assaults by the pest. We spent many times more on whatever voodoo potion they shoot into ashes to kill the little green monsters than we had on the tree itself.
That seemed to work. For a few years, I held out hope that my tree, separated as it is from its fellow trees, might be one of the rare survivors. I told myself that the weird signs of distress — sending off all these ugly suckers that I dutifully trimmed back — were caused by the borer treatment itself, which was not always applied expertly, in my amateur opinion.
This past summer a large part of the crown never sprouted leaves. It looked dead. The arborist we consulted said, sure, he could pare back the dead crown, but the tree would look horrible and it would soon die anyway. Having previously condemned the majestic sugar maple in our front yard, I knew I could do this. But I did not plant the sugar maple. The ash I did. You're not supposed to outlive your trees — that's one purpose of planting them. To give shade to generations yet unborn. Not this tree. Since I am taking woodworking, I thought of saving the wood, kiln drying it, making a table, or a baseball bat. But a) that would take a lot of effort b) I'm not good enough to make a table or a baseball bat, yet and c) Owl Lumber sells ash wood.
The tree came down Monday. Part of me wish I'd fled to the gym, to not be party to the removal process. But it seemed smart to stick around while the work was being done. I put in my Airpods and listened to Mozart to drown out the screams of the chainsaws. Advanced Tree Care did the job quickly and efficiently — so efficiently they almost left without trimming another tree back off our roof, but I pointed out the lapse, and that it was in the contract, and a worker went up and took care of it. So I was glad I had stayed.
The space where the tree had been looks surprisingly big. The stump is there — I have to get some stump remover for it. Life is sometimes about planting and looking forward, sometimes about cutting down and letting go.
A shame that even the treatment didn't work. But woodworking?
ReplyDeleteMy son asked me. It's useful, contemplative. Jesus was a carpenter.
DeleteI appreciate how you can make a meaningful story, and a little lesson, out of what to many would be just another tree.
ReplyDeleteThis past summer the tornadoes that tracked through the SW suburbs ripped off a significant number of major branches in the crown of the ash in our back yard and split the trunk in half. We planted it nearly 25 years ago and worked hard to save it from the ash borers. The arborist said that there was no way to save it given the state of the trunk. We had him take it down and grind the stump. Every time that I look out the door to the patio I get a bit sad.
ReplyDeleteWhen I bought my house in 2003 I didn't pay much attention to the fact that the living room faced west. There was a nice big tree on the (city-owned) parkway that provided shade to the windows. Fast forward a decade or so and it turns out it's an ash tree and it's dying. Contacted the city and got put on the list for tree removal. Another few years of parking under the tree and small branches falling on my roof (no damage). My day finally comes and the tree is cut down. Some weeks later the stump is ground out. A hole in the ground, no tree, no shade. City was supposed to plant a new tree but the space is too narrow. I miss that tree. Especially on 90 degree days.
ReplyDeleteAhhhhhhhh, you said the magic words when you mentioned Owl Lumber and woodworking. No better way to idle away a Saturday morning than browsing the stacks at Owl Lumber. Looking for interesting bits of wood, etc. The trouble with your tree would be having it ripped into planks and then the expense of having it dried. A pair of simple Adirondak (or if you prefer Muskoka) chairs for the back yard might have been an interesting use for the wood. They're mostly decorative of course. Not always comfy for lounging.
ReplyDeleteI’m still trying to prolong the inevitable with my ash. Planted 30 years ago, I keep saying I’ll give it another 2 years. It’s the only shade for my deck.
ReplyDeleteTrees are a lot like pets.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen a felled tree that didn't break my heart.
Perhaps it's why I hate the Giving Tree.
All we do is take. We never thank the trees.
I hope they understand.
Mr. B
My husband goes into deep mourning every time we lose a tree.
DeleteWe lost a gathering tree once. It was a majestic , shade tree that grew on the lot next to our small plot in a mobile home park in Arlington Heights, our starter home. The summers were long and hot in a mobile home. At night, everyone came to our gathering tree where we put a picnic table and we all talked, drank cool drinks and played Scrabble. Then….well they needed the plot one year to move a home into and the mobile home park figured the cost to remove a beautiful, old healthy tree was worth it. I cried for days. No more gathering. Then we had to move.
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved to NB in 1988, we had a beautiful bushy tree in the front yard. We arranged to have it professionally trimmed after which it looked shockingly bare. I cried. Trees have souls. Dead or alive they resurrect in one form or another.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it’s hard to keep up with standards of beauty, health, and the invasive intrusions. But caretaking is a healthy diversion.
Sorry you lost your tree! We have a majestic ash in our backyard, it gets injections every two years and has been healthy so far. (Other than the damage done before we realized we had a problem) I’m attached to memories trees, climbing, enjoying the shade on a hot day, tree forts! I still go back to the first house we bought to look at the blue spruce that my grandfather and I dug up and transplanted from the UP. Maybe it’s not the tree as much as the memories that come with it.
ReplyDeleteAlways sad to lose a tree. Worse when you also selected it, planted it, and tended it. I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteAshes have held cultural significance throughout history. The Druids preferred staffs made of ash, for example. I hope you saved some of the wood for a fire, at least.
Here is a poem by Celia Congreve (1930) in commemoration of your lost tree:
Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut's only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold
Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter's cold
But ash wet or ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.
That's a delightful poem. Thanks for sharing.
DeleteAnd Kipling:
DeleteOh, do not tell the priest our plight
For he would call it a sin
But we have been out in the woods all night
A'conjuring summer in
And we bring good news by word of mouth
Good news for cattle and corn
For now is the Sun come up from the South
With Oak and Ash and Thorn
Hate to lose a good tree. I wonder if the tree trimmers take the wood to a sawmill or just make mulch of it? Ashes to (saw)dust.
ReplyDeleteAbout 10 years ago, we lost a magnificent ash tree in the parkway that was probably planted when our late-19th Century house was built. Its replacement, a disease-resistant (so they say) elm is doing well, but is still a kid as trees go. The elm in our front yard, also the age of our house, is king of the neighborhood. We have it treated every year—and so far so good—but we also buy tree-removal insurance from Evanston every year.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they can’t use ash for baseball bats anymore is why there are so many more broken bats in the majors. Maple is a lot more brittle. And don’t get me started on aluminum.
I’m sorry to hear about your tree. One grows attached to the living things we care for. Would be strange if we didn’t.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever meet Arthur Plotnik? I invited him to speak at the Chicago Public Library, once or maybe twice when it was my business to do that sort of thing. He came and was delightful, a lovely man. On another occasion, he held a walk around a park, pointing out different tree species and explaining how to identify them. It was a fun and informative occasion, but alas I have retained little.
No, but I did notice he wrote his book in consultation with the Morton Arboretum.
DeleteAhh. Ash trees. Once upon a time my Girl Scout troop was doing a badge on nature or some such thing, and we wanted to plant a tree near the playground at school, where parents could sit in shade while watching their urchins at play. One of the dads dug up an ash tree from a nearby forested area that he owned and donated it to our effort. Alas, this hopeful planting corresponded with the influx of the emerald ash borer a few years later, and the tree succumbed. Our half-acre+ lot has several ash trees, and though we've lost some, my husband continues to faithfully treat the 9 or 10 that remain in hopes of maintaining some of the lushness of green and shade. Sorry about yours, but wish us luck with ours. They are starting to get old, but have a few years left, if all goes well.
ReplyDeleteI listened to a piece on NPR last week about the scientist s studying emerald ash board and its effect on ash trees .
ReplyDeleteIt seems there were single trees here and there that weren't affected by the borer and they tested those trees and found that they were naturally resistant. They have crossbred them to make what they believe is a highly resistant strain of ash trees and are planting a Grove to see if they have a strain now of Ash that won't be affected by the borer. It's good news, but too late for those that have already been killed
We have 5 what used-to-be beautiful maples in competing stages of dying. Time and nature not sufficient, Asplundh mercenaries assaulted 3 over our objections. Then our recommended BBB-endorsed arborist deeply wounded all 5 to the delight of squirrels, woodpeckers, and parasitic vermin. They have become personal metaphors or is it analogies, for my own competition toward death. I cannot bring myself to let a limb be trimmed unless it's knocking us in the head. They won't be taken down if they produce leaves. Global climate change supports my decision. Our home would fry without their shade.
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard of the practices of Asplundh — that's quite a situation. I'm sorry they maimed your trees. I think I might bear some responsibility for the death of the ash — the treatment seemed to be doing it more harm than the ash borer, and I dialed it back.
DeleteYou wisely note that life is sometimes about letting go, to which I would add that it is also about letting be. You are such a curious person, so I can’t recommend strongly enough that you simply let your tree stump BE. Do not grind it out or add chemicals to destroy it. Just watch to see what nature does when you let things be.
ReplyDeleteI bought my place one month after you got yours and it had a silver maple in the small city backyard. My thought — Wow, I own a tree too! It was very young, maybe 15-20 feet tall then and I was a clueless homeowner. As the years passed, the leaves shaded out my lame attempts to grow vegetables, but I wasn’t attentive to gardening anyway and more shade meant less grass to mow. But then one day my power went out due to a tree crotch growing up into a power line. ComEd just moved the line to the other side of the branch and I realized it would do the same thing soon to the next wire up. Shortly thereafter I had basement plumbing problems thanks to tree roots growing into pipes. The tree was bad news at the top and bottom, but the environmentalist in me didn’t want to be a tree killer!
By chance I met the ‘top tree guy’ in the Streets & San department at a program who said he’d swing by and give his opinion. His immediate reaction without hesitation was, “Get rid of it.” I was shocked but he explained that sugar maples grow really fast, which is why people like them, but it means they’re very weak. I acknowledged a large bough broke off in a big storm and ticked off the neighbor whose yard it fell into. It was then clear the tree hadn’t been chosen/planted but just self-seeded and, clearly, in an awful location. It had to go.
I was too cheap to pay the tree company the additional cost to grind out the stump, assuming I could do it myself. Instead, the lazy gardener in me decided to see how long it would take to naturally decay. That was a great decision! The answer is about 3-4 years, and during that time I witnessed a large and fascinating array of mushrooms and fungi sprouting there, along with countless insects that found homes there, and the birds that ate them. This past April the top seemed intact but it was totally rotted underneath as my foot sank in deep as I stepped on it. I threw down some seeds to see what would happen because I didn’t care if vines made a mess of the space. I was rewarded with one beautiful pumpkin and one so-so tomato plant. And next spring will have lots of great compost to use in the rest of my now-sunny garden.
So please just let it be and enjoy watching while nature does its thing.
Thanks for sharing that. Good advice.
DeleteAdvanced should have removed the stump. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteI had that thought. We're checking the contract.
DeleteWe took down an old Bur Oak which was dying. We miss the shade and the canopy, but we weren't prepared for how much we'd miss it's stark but beautiful presence in winter. It had spanned the western sky view from our kitchen window.
ReplyDeleteWe had looked into reclaiming the wood, but the cost to mill, kiln and store the lumber were substantial. In the end, it was clear that the guys who hauled away the massive sections of trunk would be delivering it to be reclaimed. We kept a four inch cross section.
I know it’s probably foolish to anthropomorphize things, but it’s hard not to. When you have lived with a tree that long, it can kind of feel like family. And with so many trees being cut down all the time so something ugly can be built on the land where it lived, it feels almost criminal. My development was build in 2001 and many ash trees were planted. The year they started to go, it felt to me that every day was a funeral as they were cut down. All from a bug in a package from China.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel as though In anthropomorphize trees, generally. I LIKE them. But I don't consider them sad, or happy, or ascribe human qualities to them. Honestly, I did not love the ash — not sure why, it just did not compare to a tree like my gingko, whose leaves are so smooth and lovely, plus has such a great back story. Or the pines I brought back from the UP.
DeleteLuckily, we have a beautiful now 50 years old honey locust tree on our front parkway. Our neighbors on each side lost 35 year old Ash 15 years ago. Replacements are now beginning to provide fall beauty. Love my trees. Lucky to have them.
ReplyDeleteWhat a delightful collection of tree stories. There certainly are myriad ways of appreciating our trees and mourning them when they're gone.
ReplyDeletejohn
I lived on a corner in Sauganash on the north side as a kid and sometime around 1967 or maybe earlier we lost, I’m thinking five mature Elms on our property alone and most of the canopy south to Peterson Ave. I learned about depression that year.
ReplyDeleteSd too lost a beautiful ash tree our back yard-tried the injections etc but didn't work. It's now a gentle hill with grass growing over it. This made me think about growing up in Chicago when the city and burbs lost all those elm trees-remember that? I m]am ld enough to remember all the tress lost in our neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteKnow the feeling, Mr. S. It's like saying good-bye to an animal companion. Only you have the dog or kitty for 12-15-20 years, and the tree for a lot longer. Our big front-yard maple was 45 years old, and maybe forty or fifty feet high.
ReplyDeleteMy wife planted it in 1978. It was sick, the way yours was sick. And probably in the middle stages of dying. The crown was dead, the leaves were blighted, branches were coming down and lopped off. The trunk had steel cables embedded in it, but it was only a matter of time.
A severe July storm brought down a big chunk of it. Our tree guy, sounding just like our veterinarian, said it had to be taken down.. Our tree went away in a single morning, in July of '23. Took about three hours. No more shaded front yard. And our dining room gets plenty of north light now. Great if you're an artist. Which I am not.
Took me a long time to get used to the sudden vistas of sky and clouds. And I could see the planes on the glide path to the airport, as they approached our house, 2.5 miles from the main runway. That got old pretty fast.
Was saddened and sickened. Had all the doors and windows closed, so I didn't hear the chainsaw noise. One plus, though. Come October and November, my leaf pickup (about 40-45 bags a year, on a large corner lot) was trimmed...by half (See what I did there?). It was an unavoidable trade-off. Good-bye, tree. Hello, light of day. Had no choice. More natural north light, but no more soothing green overhead, and birds, and squirrels. And the end of a shaded yard.
My neighborhood has lost a lot of trees in the last three decades. I mourned the loss of every one. Ohio has always had a lush tree canopy. But we are losing more and more of our foliage to age and blight and disease and development. My neighborhood, and my street, are no exceptions. Winter and summer storms have also taken out my trees, and those of my neighbors.
At least 25 years ago, Davey Tree, which I'm sure Mr. S remembers, told us that our biggest and oldest maple tree needed to come down. They're the big experts from Kent, which is why that town is known as The Tree City. Predictions of our tree's demise were greatly exaggerated. It hung on for another 25 years or so, looking more and more bedraggled, and necessitating the lopping off of more and more of its branches. The remaining ones did not survive this past summer's drought.
By August it had become a "widow-maker"...a potential killer that could have easily clocked me as I mowed the back yard, or squashed a passing couple and their dog and stroller. Or the whole tree could have easily crushed our garage and car. So down it came, back in September..
Two big trees gone, in a little over a year. We have two stumps now, one in the back yard and one in the front. Both of them are about 30 inches wide. The back stump supports a washtub. Mums in the fall, Christmas decorations right now. The front stump is now a platform for a "Little Free Library"--a big one--with double doors. People used it in the summertime. In the wintertime, not so much.
Miss the green and the shade of summer, and the orange, yellow, and red that usually peaked between the last week of October and Veterans Day. Now, all that is gone. Who knows what else will be gone a year from now? World peace? Domestic tranquility? Maybe you. Maybe me. Maybe all of us.
.
Anyone who loves trees should read "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner. Amazing book, and the description does not do it justice: it is about trees in general and nine people and their interactions with trees who come together to try to deal with the loss of our forests.
ReplyDeleteUntil this past summer, there was a very large tree right next to where I park at my apt. building. It provided wonderful shade for my car, and I loved listening to the birds singing in the tree and watching the squirrels run up and down the trunk every time I got in and out of my car; sometines I would linger a while just to enjoy them. Sadly, the tree had to come down. Now, I have another car next to mine instead of my beautiful tree, and there's no more wildlife to enjoy. I miss all of it.
ReplyDelete