Another Big Wind

We had a routine mid-summer squall come thru our metropolitan area this afternoon. No big deal. But of course, nothing is routine these days. So down came my enormous oak tree - easily the biggest tree on my lot. Thankfully it fell away from the house. Another planting opportunity I suppose.

There was a huge wisteria (which my wife despised) which climbed up to the very top of the oak - the wisteria's amazingly sinuous trunk was a foot in diameter. Anyway, the 2nd picture shows it spiraling around the fallen oak. My wife is at least pleased about the demise of the wisteria.

Ah, the joys of gardening!

Ouch.

Take good photographic records. Nature's editing, like humans', provides opportunities at every disturbance.

Bet that Wisteria trunk would make for some interesting carving...

edited to correct garbled sleepy grammar...

This message was edited Jul 13, 2016 11:09 PM

I wonder if the Wisteria is truly dead...

I'm certain it's not dead, but would risk marital harmony to try to rescue it.

I hope it doesn't, but I suspect it will sucker from its root system in an all-out self-preservation attempt.

It will as a couple have done here. And with one that large it will be an all out effort that will take years to kill off. They have large root systems than I imagined.

Not to mention the army of seedlings we already are pulling...
I'll be on the lookout for suckering.
I feel pretty battle-tested on that front, as I cut down a few mature Ailanthus trees when we first moved to this property 20 yrs ago.

What I have done with similar things is to cut the stump, put some Brush Killer concentrate on the cut, and put a bucket over it so it is not washed off. It gets sucked into the roots so they die. Then after a few weeks I can take bucket off, cut stump off at ground level, and plant new garden. Contaminated chunk of stump goes into trash. I wear disposable gloves too. Generally I avoid poisons but for something super invasive like Wisteria I make this exception, and this seems like a slightly less toxic way to do it.

I was rummaging around the detritus around my fallen oak and found a couple pitiful conifers, a dwarf Picea pungens cultivar and an Abies koreana Silberlocke. Both were reasonably big, though now in lamentable shape, upside down with roots exposed to our recent week-long 'excessive heat warning' weather. It is a lovely 100 degrees right now with heat index of 113. With all the debris it was hard to free them, so I rescued them as best I could essentially bare root. It was so beastly hot, it was a heroic effort to rescue them as well as I did. Who knows if they'll survive, but I spent a great deal of sweat in the CPR effort. Missing in action are an Acer triflorum and one of the yellow-tip variegated Pinus mugo's which was just coming into his own. I presume they're buried further under the massive trunk. Of course, the tree services are a little overwhelmed so I was given the option of $5,000 to remove it now, or $2,800 if I wait 8-10 wks. I'm waiting...

Sad about your oak Weerobin and sadder about the cost of it's funeral. Ouch!