Weather or not the tree goes
Today was loVELY! Absolutely cloudless skies, gentle breezes and temperature in the 60- low 70F degree range. Considering how often in the past few months it's been over 100 F, this was too good a chance to waste.
So I spent hours with the extensible pole saw cutting dead branches off the dying orchid tree. Not really a natural death, I've been butcher-pruning it the last two years hoping to kill it. Twice it fell during hurricanes, damaging the house slightly each time, and twice it came back from the stump. It overshadows and kills bushes, and my fig tree never gets enough sun to bear fruit, and I fear the tree roots will be destroying plumbing pipes. I can't cut the whole thing down myself, but I can remove smaller limbs and in a few months, maybe I'll be brave enough to ask my neighbor to ask HER neighbor for the contact info of the tree cutter she mentioned hiring recently to get rid of most of it.
One of the four trunks actually looks pretty good so I'll save that for last. I reduced the two most dead trunks as much as I could today. Tomorrow I hope to cut them down small enough to pile in the back yard in the lizard habitat I'm making against the fence. It also surrounds my salvaged dirt buckets full of hibiscus cuttings. I hope at least a few of them root--some months back I did the same thing with 24 cuttings- I THINK I have 2 plants from it. One anyway.
I had saved some seeds from volunteer tomato plants last year. Some years back I bought a little basket of mixed very small fancy tomatoes, and grew some plants from the seeds, and I saved some seeds from *them* and then later when I wasn't saving seeds some sprouted anyway. SO. If anything grows it'll be a mystery.
So I spent hours with the extensible pole saw cutting dead branches off the dying orchid tree. Not really a natural death, I've been butcher-pruning it the last two years hoping to kill it. Twice it fell during hurricanes, damaging the house slightly each time, and twice it came back from the stump. It overshadows and kills bushes, and my fig tree never gets enough sun to bear fruit, and I fear the tree roots will be destroying plumbing pipes. I can't cut the whole thing down myself, but I can remove smaller limbs and in a few months, maybe I'll be brave enough to ask my neighbor to ask HER neighbor for the contact info of the tree cutter she mentioned hiring recently to get rid of most of it.
One of the four trunks actually looks pretty good so I'll save that for last. I reduced the two most dead trunks as much as I could today. Tomorrow I hope to cut them down small enough to pile in the back yard in the lizard habitat I'm making against the fence. It also surrounds my salvaged dirt buckets full of hibiscus cuttings. I hope at least a few of them root--some months back I did the same thing with 24 cuttings- I THINK I have 2 plants from it. One anyway.
I had saved some seeds from volunteer tomato plants last year. Some years back I bought a little basket of mixed very small fancy tomatoes, and grew some plants from the seeds, and I saved some seeds from *them* and then later when I wasn't saving seeds some sprouted anyway. SO. If anything grows it'll be a mystery.