A Little Off The Top

We had some trees trimmed recently; some had become problems, and Cindy wanted to take out one that was leaning over our property to increase the amount of light the garden could receive in that area.  Because some of the trees we were having trimmed belonged to the neighbors, who had given us permission to cut them, we hired a professional tree company with a master arborist to make sure the cutting was done properly and safely.  Since one of the major branches was above our power line, they had to have someone who was certified for that type of work.

Trees and Power Lines--Not Good Together

What we didn't count on was that it was very entertaining to watch the process from our upstairs windows.

We were amazed at how fast the work went, considering that they first had to climb the huge old Cedar tree and rig up the safety lines before they could even start work.

We also had the largest and probably oldest of our Lemonade Berry (Rhus integrifolia) shrubs taken out.  It was suffering from scorch, termites and Bark Beetles.

Lemonade Berry Shrubs

We like the Lemonade Berry shrubs because they're native, drought tolerant plants that grow slowly and their broad evergreen leaves are supposed to be "spark catchers", slowing down the progress of wildfires, but the big one was just too damaged to save, so we took it out to prevent the spread of some of these diseases to the other plants.