Berries and Birds

I found some blackberries growing wild. They were tasty. I might go back tomorrow and pick some.

This is our big elm in the front yard. At the top, just to the left of centre, there are some yellow and dying leaves. Oh no! Does this mean this big tree going to succumb to the dreaded Dutch Elm Disease too???

After supper and the news, we sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful evening. Strangely, there were no birds around except for two robins that mostly just sat on the fence.

Here they are sitting on the fence (one at far right and the other ar far left).

A close-up. We think this one is the female of the pair.

And this is the male bird (we think).

Later in the evening, the sky got very dark and we could hear the rumble of thunder. We were hoping for rain. The dark cloud passed over us and then the sky started getting brighter and we though, how disappointing, no rain. But then it started, and it rained for about an hour and sometimes quite heavily too. As you can see from the brown patches in the lawn, we really needed it!

The Dying Elm

Before. The elm is dying because of Dutch Elm Disease. There are some green leaves, but not that many.

The tree is felled!

Trimming off the twiggy branches that are no good for firewood.

A truck load of tree trunk, good length for the wood stove.

The end of the Elms - part 2

Saturday morning came with the forecast milder temperatures, but without the forecast rain. That was good because it meant that Steve could come by and finish cutting up the remaining elm tree that was on our front lawn.

Steve was kind enough to cut the stumps down so they would be below the level of the soil, once I filled in the hole with dirt - you can see they are flat here, which is different from in the above photo. Steve mentioned that he had heard that putting some Septobac on the stumps would help accelerate the decomposition of the stumps. I had some of that, so I put a pouch on each of the stumps. The other powder over the twigs, leaves, and the rest of the hole, is bone meal - I spread it out to add nutrients to the soil.

This photo is after dumping a trailer load of dirt on top of the stumps. I had a number of egg cartons that I put in the hole, since they are biodegradable.

This is the final photo. I put 5 trailer loads of dirt into the hole, as well as bone meal and some egg cartons. There is still a bit of hollow there, but I used up the rest of the dirt pile that I had, so that's the best that I could do.

Since it was so mild, I also put another coat of paint on the front door. As it was getting dark, I couldn't see how it turned out, so I will have to wait until tomorrow to see the results. Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best...

The end of the elms

Wednesday: These are the two elms that died from Dutch Elm Disease. It's time for them to come down so one of our neighbours down the road, who would like the wood for their wood stove, offered to cut them down for us in exchange for the wood. That's a good deal for us, as the quotes we got from the urban forestry people ranged from $300-600 dollars. So this is the 'before' photo.

We have a little forest on the other side of our property, and there are several dead trees in there too. I marked them with orange surveyors tape, and hopefully we can get those cut down too.

The first tree had a slight lean towards the garage, so we tied a trowel to the end of a rope and threw it up into the crotch of the tree (at bottom right of the photo). We pulled on the rope, as the last cut was being made in the tree trunk, to make sure the tree would fall away from the driveway. Unfortunately, the handle of the trowel broke as we were pulling on the rope. Fortunately the tree fell away from the garage, so no problems. This photo shows Steve cutting off the little branches prior to cutting the branches up into logs. Steve cut the tree into logs and we loaded it into the truck.

It was getting dark, so this was the last photo that turned out. I was surprised to see the long leader branches up and off to the right in this photo. Since this is the direction of the prevailing wind, I wonder if the wind made the branches form this way?? Most of this second tree was leaning towards the right, over the lawn, but we wanted the tree to fall beside the driveway. So we tied the rope around a high branch and pulled on it as it was being cut. Again, the rope came loose. This time we were able to stop cutting the tree and refasten the rope, and then everything went as planned.

As it was dark -- and raining -- after this, we stopped and had supper. Yummy beef stew!!


Thursday: I took this photo a short while ago. As you can see, it is very foggy and rainy. What you can't see is that it is chilly. We have nice weather forecast for Saturday, between 12 and 17C (depending on which forecast you listen to), so that will probably be the day that I can finish painting the front door and the tree can finish getting cut up.

Trees and Pano

It's been a while since I posted a photo of the two Elm trees on our front yard that are dying from Dutch Elm Disease (DED). The tree on the left now is mostly dead, and the one of the right looks like it is about 50% gone... :(

I haven't done a panorama photo for a while, so I stopped and took the sequence of photos that I need to do make a panorama. It was such a clear day with nice light, that the colours in this photo look almost artificial, but that's what it looked like - for real!!

A tale of three trees

These are Elm trees. I guess I don't know much about trees because I thought they were Ash trees and the dying one was succumbing to the Emerald Ash Borer - a pest that is expected to wipe out 100% of the Ash trees in Ottawa (all varieties of Ash) - this will make a big change in Ottawa as 25% of the trees are Ash trees. There are no known natural predators to the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), except for a tiny wasp and woodpeckers, but those aren't prevalent enough to arrest the EAB. Ontario and the federal government has spent a couple of hundred million dollars trying to prevent the EAB from leaving the infected areas and there are rules that if an EAB-infected treee is cut down that the wood cannot be taken off the property.

But back to the Elm trees. It turns out that the middle elm tree that is dying is infected with the Dutch Elm Disease. We will have to get the tree cut down and hopefully the other two trees will survive. I bought some fertilizer for the trees to hopefully help them to be stronger.

Update (Aug 31): it turns out that the two trees that are together are both dying. Dutch Elm Disease can be passed from tree to tree if their roots are in close contact. DED is like arterioscloris in people, it stops the sap from flowing in the tree and that's what kills it. DED is usually carried from an infected tree to another tree by a beetle.


Fortunately, this is the first bird fatality that we have had this year. It was a young bird, probably just hatched this year, unfortunately. We haven't been drawing the curtains over that window, but have not started doing that again.