The Tree Saga Continues

When last we left the Tree Saga - if you've been following here, on Twitter, and on Facebook - we'd seen a disaster in the making in the yard, gotten a fairly high quote to remove the tree, and unfortunately confirmed that the price wasn't out of line.

Today there were more developments.

It turns out that my town has an arborist. I know this because I looked it up. How did I know to look it up? That I couldn't tell you - although it has This Old House written all over it. So I call the arborist and leave a message (the guy has a voicemail like he might say "could you please speak into the machine?") and today he leaves me a message (on the line where the outgoing message says "please don't leave me a meesage here, I never check the mailbox, call my cell or send an email) saying he'd pop around to the house and have a look and that he couldn't say anything official as the tree isn't on borough property, but that he could give me an unofficial assessment. So he called back later and did just that.

Keep in mind now that the first guy came to see it and said "Take it down."

So of course this guy says "Sure I think you can save that tree." He goes on to say that basically it would mean installing some threaded rod in the break and then a support cable higher up - which happens to be the way I would have detailed the repair myself had I thought I knew the first thing about trees, so maybe I do.

As an aside this makes for a GREAT project for me because I like to take on anything that would mean I would need to buy tools. This project would require a ladder, maybe some climbing gear, an impact wrench and deep well sockets (only one, but who buys one socket), probably a nasty looking auger bit, and perhaps a come-along or even a winch. That's a fairly neat looking list - maybe about $800 in tools? I bet that's close to what the tree guy would charge me to do it for me.

So the Tree Service says take it down and the Arborist says it can be repaired or maybe just take down part of it.

But of course there's more.

See the arborist goes on to say that the particular tree in question is an ash. Regular TANBI readers might remember this post about the ash trees around my home town that were all being cut down due to the invasion of the Emerald Ash Borer. Well it turns out that right here in PA we also have that particular pest, not yet right here, but in Western PA in the Cranberry area. The point he was making in telling me this was that it seemed like it might be foolish to spend too much money saving the tree if in not too short a time I might have to take it down anyway.

Great. So to recap: It can be saved, or part of it can be saved, but even if you save it you might have to cut it down soon - depending on totally unknown insect migration.

Sometimes information just makes things less clear than they were to begin with.