Tree removal

Tree removal

We had a big maple tree in the back yard that we had to take down because it was too close to the power line. This is the before picture, obviously.

Partly cut down.

Cutting down the main part of the trunk.

Taking off a piece of the trunk.

Another action shot.

Just a pile of logs. Some friends came a few weeks later and picked up all the logs - it took two trips.

Now there is clear air where the wire is.

This is the stump grinder. The operator is driving the machine over to grind down another stump. We had about five stumps ground down.

This is the stump grinder in action. The machine had a little diesel engine that drove a hydraulic pump that spun the grinding blade as well as driving the wheels.

Sorry to see you go, Mr. Maple.

Fall colours!

A brilliant sugar maple in a neighbour's yard.

Tomatoes are doing well

All the warmth and sun means the tomato plants are doing well. Although we have to give them a good drink every day since they are in pots. There are two different kinds of tomatoes, a cherry tomato and beefsteak kind of tomato. Can you tell which is which?

All the hot weather lead to extreme weather warning. First we saw dark clouds around us. We could hear thunder and saw rain falling to the north and west.


And then we got some quite severe winds. The red lines indicates the normal line where this little maple tree usually stands. It was almost bent over.

The elm tree in the front yard was really blowing all over - we thought that perhaps some branches might break off. The sign was blowing past horizontal - as indicated by the blue line.

We got a little bit of rain, but not enough. The lawn is looking parched as you can see. I put the hose on for the elm and the service berry tree on Thursday.

Free tree!

The City of Ottawa delivered our free tree on Friday, along with a bag of shellfish compost and pine mulch.

This is a closeup of the leaves on the tree.

We had asked for a ginkgo biloba tree as our first choice. The Ginkgo Biloba has very distinctive leaves, so we didn't get our first choice. The Ginkgo Biloba is very unique and is very hardy against pests and harsh climactic conditions. This species of tree also has no other living relatives. But the most unique aspect of that tree is that it is a living fossil - it is from the Pilocene era.

For our second choice, we had asked for a Maple tree, which this is not. I couldn't remember what our 3rd choice was so I started googling for images of the leaves from the tree list on the city's web site, ignoring the maples and the ginkgo biloba, of course!

This is a photo of a serviceberry tree that I found on ecoterralandscape.com. I saw this photo and it reminded me that I had selected the serviceberry because its berries are good food for birds. The serviceberry is not a huge tree so having it relatively close to the garage is okay.

This is the info from the City of Ottawa web site about the serviceberry.

Can you read it? I'll transcribe it for you:
Botanical name/common name: Amelanchier spp. Serviceberry
Native to Ottawa: yes
Average height at maturity: 7 m
Average width at maturity: 4 m
Characteristics: white flowers and edible fruits
Summer colour: light green
Fall colour: red-orange


The tree has been planted, and I am watering it with the root feeder. I left it in the ground for almost an hour because only a little water comes out as the end is mostly clogged with a little stone that is stuck in the nozzle!

Enjoying the outdoors

This is a close up of the flowers on the Purple Sandcherry. The dark red foliage is really stunning.

This is a crab apple tree. Yesterday it was covered, yes COVERED, in blossoms, but they seem to have fallen off today.

Here is Tawny, enjoying a visit to the salad bar. It's really funny to watch Tawny and Taz when we take them out in the afternoon because the very very first thing they do is to head for the tall grass and start chowing down.

Tawny says there are two major positive things about swimming. #1. it's a lot of fun. #2. her hair gets dampened down so she looks like she still has her slim girlish figure! :)

I saw this dragonfly when we were down by the water, it was clinging onto the leg of the bench that I was sitting on. I thought that perhaps it had just hatched (is that the proper word to use?) from its cocoon and its wing was curled over because it was drying out. After having a chance to zoom in on the photo and look at it more carefully, I think this dragonfly is missing the companion to the curled-over wing from the other side. This is too bad, because dragonflies eat a lot of mosquitoes and other annoying insects. We like dragonflies.

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.

More fall colours

These are some mums that Freda planted a couple of months ago. They have really done well in the garden - maybe it's because of the stone loon that's watching out for them! :)

I love seeing the brilliant colours of the maples against the blue sky.

This is the view driving down our road. It is prettier in the morning because the sun is lighting up the leaves in front of you, instead of backlighting them as you see in this photo (taken in the afternoon).

Fall colours

I've been somewhat remiss in not posting a photo of the beautiful fall colours we have had.

So here it is. In my defense, it has been quite cool and rainy, which means overcast which means the brilliant gold, oranges, and reds of the leaves don't really 'pop', so I had to wait for a day that was a bit brighter. It's been raining a lot lately, which meant you had to wait a while, hope this photo justifies the wait.


I haven't done a panorama photo for a while, so here is one. The guy was here cutting the grass on the hill, as you can see. This photo is comprised of six other photos which made for a pretty decent panorama. You can see a dark rain cloud across the lake, just to the left of the centre in the background. That rain arrived about 45 minutes after I took these photos, and about 3 minutes after we got in from taking the dogs for a long walk - good timing!

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.