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Posts Tagged ‘Trees’

Big-leafed update

Posted in Arboriculture, Miscellaneous, Opportunistic plants, Plant spacing, Trees, tagged , , , , on October 11, 2013| 4 Comments »

Last week I drove past the Paulownias I wrote about in 2009, and realized that they deserved another blog post.  In the four years since that post, all three trees have shot up.  

I kept trying to shoot an image with the two paired trees in it, minus the utility lines, but it wasn’t doable without risking life and limb.  The trees have grown higher than the house and the utility lines, and have easily tripled (at least) in size.

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Two paulownias planted four years ago now shade almost the entire front yard.

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The smaller of the two trees measures perhaps 12″ DBH.  The once-sunny walkway is now almost entirely shaded.

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It’s a little tricky to see, but the right-hand tree is larger than the one to the left.  Directly behind it stands a large Japanese maple; in the 2009 post you can see the maple’s fall color, and compare its trunk size to the now-towering Paulownia’s. 

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Bare-root fastigiate beech transplant

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Massachusetts Arborists Association, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

Air-tool transplanting is continuing here in Massachusetts; while it hasn’t yet become commonplace, arborists in this part of the world are conversant with the techniques, and some firms have been routinely been moving trees bare-root for the last few years.  Leahy Landscaping of Lynn, MA, has a team of transplanters, led by Mass. Certified Arborist Bob Dobias.  Bob recently sent me some photos of a project his crew carried out this past summer; they moved a beautiful 14′ Fastigiate Beech in Salem with air.  They relocated the tree from a location right next to a building to a spot further out on the property, where it can now grow to its full potential.  Here are the pix Bob sent:

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This tree has been growing nicely next to a condo entry, but was likely planted there when it was a much smaller specimen.

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Bob has exposed the topmost roots, and is working his way underneath the root mass.  Note that he’s wearing ear protection and has dust barriers set up around the work area.

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Fastigiate Beech is a narrow tree, and while a blowout to the dripline frees most of the roots, some root mass still had to be cut.  Bob reports that his crew cut one root that was growing under the driveway.

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Nice root mass on this tree.  The time had arrived for this tree to be transplanted; notice that the roots to the right are shorter and have been redirected down by the presence of the building wall.  A tree that grows for too long this close to a wall might not be as readily moved as this one — not because it can’t be dug out, but because the root mass has grown too asymmetrically for the tree to stand well away from the wall.

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The Beech being introduced to its new home.  According to Bob, the crew could have lifted the tree by hand, but decided to use the machine to minimize hazards to it.  For the actual move, they tied the tree to the forks; this shot, it has been untied and is being guided into the planting hole.

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And from a different angle.  The hole receiving it could be a bit wider, to make the backfilling and mudding in easier, especially as there are no obstructions around it.

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With the tree placed in its new home and backfilled, the crew waters and muds it in.  Leahy added better loam for backfill, and secured the tree with duckbills, to insure stability while it grows into the new location.

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Proud Leahy crew and Fastigiate Beech.  The Beech should now be able to grow a little fuller both above and below ground on the side that had faced the building.  The transplant operation took about six hours from start to finish.

Bob reports that the tree has experienced some stress from the move, but he expects it will equilibrate crown and root growth and leaf out well next year.  We’ll keep an eye out for more pix next year, to check its progress.

Fastigiate Beech moved by:

Leahy Landscaping, Lynn, MA

Arborist in charge:  Bob Dobias, MCA

Crew:  Alfredo Esteban, Shane Corcoran, Greg Beatrice

 

 

 

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Katsura update

Posted in Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Last February I wrote about the bare-root transplant of a large Katsura tree (Cercidophyllum japonicum) at UMass, beautifully executed by the pros at Foti Landscape and Tree. Matt Foti just sent me a photo he took last week of the tree, which has settled into its new home nicely.

Though the crew kept a large slug of soil under the tree’s butt for the move, Matt told me that they did some excavation at the root flare, as they always do, to check for girdling, circling, or damaged roots. (I hadn’t noticed the excavation when I first saw the transplant photos, but if you click back to that post you’ll notice it.) The crew found a girdling root and removed it — and clearly, from this current photo, the tree didn’t skip a beat.

Even in a backlit shot on a very hot day this tree is looking happy.

Even in a backlit shot on a very hot day this tree is looking happy.

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The Taproot Question Again

Posted in Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Root-washing, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2013| 2 Comments »

This year’s New England Grows featured a talk by Jim Flott, who discussed the bare-root transplanting of large trees.  Jim talked about root-washing, something he has studied, practiced, and taught, on his own and with the late Bonnie Appleton of Virginia Tech.  He spoke about the history of bare-root transplanting — until the middle of the 1900s bare-rooting was the primary way to transplant trees — and about bare-rooting with air tools.  It was a great presentation; this abstract by Flott and Appleton covers a lot of the territory Jim discussed, and it’s worth a read.

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Bare-root transplant with air tools — 12″ caliper London Plane tree, moved in late July 2009 in Wellesley, MA.

After Jim’s talk in one of the large auditoriums, he moved to a smaller room for an ‘Speaker Unplugged’ session, where people could ask him questions and exchange information.   As had happened at New England Grows three years ago, when Matt Foti discussed bare-root transplanting with air tools, someone asked about the effects of bare-root transplanting on a tree’s taproot.

How does bare-root transplant affect a taprooted tree?  The answer, both from Jim and from Matt, is that taproots are rarely an issue.

A taproot typically forms when a seed germinates; the baby taproot emerges first from the seed, growing down and anchoring the seed in the soil.  Next, the cotyledon shoot emerges and grows upward.  As the cotyledon starts to photosynthesize, root hairs branch out from the taproot, and the root volume grows and spreads.  The depth of roots is determined in part by available moisture and in part by soil type.  Typically, organic soils — which hold water and allow good cation exchange — rest at the top of the soil profile; mineral soils underlie the organic horizons, and are much less hospitable to roots.  Here in New England soils may be quite thin, and are often underlain with rock.

So taproots here will serve that useful anchoring function early in a tree’s life, but soil conditions and the plant’s own tendencies will promote the outward, rather than the downward growth of a tree.  In fact, the overall growth of tree roots tends to be outward, rather than down; the old image of a root mass volume and form mirroring a tree’s crown volume and form has been proven false.

We know that trees tend to develop their roots in the top 18″ of soil; the larger the tree, the deeper that zone may go, but typically it extends no more than 3 or 4 feet below grade.  Some thick roots on very large trees may extend vertically down in this zone, if soil conditions permit, but many more run horizontally away from the tree’s trunk.  The anchoring function of that original taproot, if it remains, is replaced by the anchoring provided by a much broader and more extensive mass of roots growing out and (to a much less extent) down.

As I wrote in an earlier post (with thanks to Linda Chalker-Scott for its title):

It’s helpful to keep in mind another factor when thinking about taproots and transplanting trees.  More often than not, a large tree being transplanted was planted out years earlier as a B&B plant, or possibly moved into place with a tree spade.  Both methods would have cut any taproot in the initial planting.  When the end of a root is cut, the tree tends to send shoots out from just above the cut end.  In a vertically oriented root, the new shoots are apt to extend horizontally from the cut end, and feeder roots would similarly extend out horizontally.  The situation may well be different for a tree that has grown from seed in one place, that someone now wants to transplant bare root, but for most landscape trees the taproot issue is moot — whatever taproot may have existed when the tree seed germinated has already been cut, and the tree has adjusted for its loss.


A carrot grows downward, with rootlets out to the side and foliage above ground. A tree is not a carrot. Photo by obenson in Flickr.

This beech tree was moved last fall, having been transplanted once about 20 years ago. See how the root mass extends far out horizontally, with a relatively shallow depth.

This is one of the thickest roots extending vertically from the beech’s trunk. This root was cut in the earlier (20 years previous) transplant; note the resultant root growth just above the cut.

 

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Moving maturity

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 11, 2013| 11 Comments »

Last fall Matt Foti‘s excellent crew moved a mature Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) on the UMass campus in Amherst.  Jim Flott showed one photo of the tree in his New England Grows presentation last week, to illustrate the breadth of a root mass; take a look here to see what it looked like during and after the soil blowoff.

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Notice the trench dug around the entire root mass.  Typically, the crew uses a line tied to the trunk to swing and mark the edge of trench at the tree’s dripline.  If really significant roots appear once the first buckets of soil have been dug, the crew can decide to shift the trench edge outward to save more roots in the blowoff.  Alternatively, if no roots are found that far out from the trunk, the excavator can dig closer in to the trunk until roots appear, and the trench placed at that diameter out from the trunk.

Plywood is visible to the left of the photo; soil is blown into the trench for removal, but plenty of soil and dust fly around, and the plywood barriers help contain it, and keep the surrounding site cleaner.  The soil pile behind the plywood is what has been excavated to form the trench.

According to Matt, this tree is 20″ dbh, with a 22-24′ wide root mass.  The crew blew it off in one day, and moved it about 2,000′ away the next day.

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One of the benefits of air tool work like this is the fact that roots become visible, and it becomes clear how a tree grows below the soil surface.  The roots here obviously cover a huge area, and their density and branching suggest resilience and vitality.

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Notice how much soil remains around the base of the tree.  Leaving a slug of soil makes it easier to place the tree level in its new location, at the correct depth.  The crew usually blows soil first from the root tips, and works back toward the trunk, always blowing soil toward the trench.  The circular track around the tree’s trunk was made by the crew toward the end of the blowout, as they worked their way around the tree.  Pigtails of roots are held off the ground with lines tied back to tree branches well-padded with burlap.

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Katsura en route to its new home on the UMass campus.  Interesting to note how dense and finely branched the tree’s crown is, especially in light of how dense and finely branched the root system is.

Stay tuned for more photos of this tree in the next few months, when we get some followup shots after it has leafed out.

Location:  University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

Moved by:  Matthew R. Foti Landscape & Tree Service, Inc.

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Underground Peek

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Arboriculture, Miscellaneous, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

It was just over a year ago that an ecologist and ISA-Certified Arborist, Lisa Montana, contacted me from AECOM, the global architectural/engineering giant.  She works in New York City, and is involved on projects that require utility trenching under sidewalks and around the roots of adjacent street trees.  When her project sites have contaminated soils, excavation must take place with shovels and bars, the old approach to bare-rooting plants.  On sites with clean soils, the workers use air tools, which let them remove soil and preserve important tree roots.

Lisa kindly sent me some photos of air-tool trenching projects she has overseen, and with my apologies to her for the long delay, I’m posting them here.  Take a look, and note how persistent and vigorous those critical roots are even underneath concrete pavement.

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This one is a 26″ dbh Honey Locust.

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This astonishing root mass belongs to a 28″ dbh Oak.

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These roots come from an enthusiastic 29″ dbh Norway Maple that needs the rooting area in the lawn beyond the sidewalk.

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This final photo shows a 32″ dbh London Plane whose roots are seeking moisture in the bed beyond the fence.

It appears as if each of these trees is reaching underground toward open ground, where adequate moisture and air can be found to sustain them.  I have been mulling over these photos for some time, and especially since Hurricane Sandy, when so many uprooted New York street trees appeared to have root masses that conformed to the bar-like shape of their planting spaces.  I wonder if those root masses had been cut at some point, as is often done for the reconstruction of a sidewalk or for utility work done in a less sensitive way than AECOMM’s methods.

Thanks, Lisa, for sharing these photos, and giving us a peek at what’s going on under some sidewalks.

Location:  New York City

Arborist In Charge:  Lisa Montana, AECOMM

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Remarkable weeping hemlock

Posted in Miscellaneous, Plant management, Trees, tagged , , , , , on October 27, 2011| 2 Comments »

This past summer my good friend, Consulting Arborist Carl Cathcart took me to see an unusual weeping hemlock in a suburb of Boston.  He had shown it to me earlier in the spring, when we got to see it from the road.  This time, he had gotten permission from the owners to examine the tree close up, and so we were very fortunate to be able to stand under and next to it, measuring its stems, its height and width, and generally marveling at its astonishing beauty and size.

The tree’s crown measures approximately 33 -36’ high at its highest point, and approximately 63’ across at its widest spread.  Carl noted that it is averaging 5 1/2 – 6″ of new needled growth all around.

Seven main stems grow from the base.  Their sprawling nature made it impossible to get a diameter at breast height,  but we were able to determine that at roughly 4 ½’ from the ground the stems ranged from 15″ in diameter to 31″ in diameter.  At the tree’s base, we measured a girth of approximately 84″  — this was a tricky measurement to get as some stems grew close to horizontally from the base.  We stood in awe at this magnificent specimen.

Take a look at these photos.  We visited on a cloudy-bright day, the type of day typically good for photographing, but found so much contrast between shadow under the crown and light outside the crown that I resorted to black and white for some photos, the better to show the tree’s form.

It’s not often that we get to see such enormous and grand specimens in this part of the world.  Carl and I appreciated the privilege we had been granted, and hope you enjoy seeing what we saw.

The hemlock from one angle. It sits on a large lawn where it has been allowed to grow in full sun and without competition from other trees.

A slightly different angle. Note Carl's legs under the canopy, just to the right of center.

Carl under the canopy. Note the size of the stems compared the the size of his torso.

Under the canopy.

Underneath, from a different angle.

Not much greenery inside the tree, but plenty outside to make this limb-framed cave.

Magnificent.

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How not to plant a tree

Posted in Arboriculture, Miscellaneous, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , on July 30, 2011| 1 Comment »

This past week I had occasion to pass the same suburban Massachusetts middle school on two days in a row, and on each of those days my eyes goggled at the sight of a new planting on a slope facing the road.  The array of brown, grey, and coppery-red foliage — on the trees that still had foliage — was stunning.  From what I can tell, over the last month or so more than thirty new oaks, zelkovas, and pears were planted as an understory to a mature oak forest.  Did I say stunning?  Yes — but not in a good way.  Most of the trees are dead, and it’s likely that within a few weeks the few still hanging on will die.

You have to admire the forward thinking that gets a new stand of trees started while an existing stand remains; it’s a principle used more in European landscapes than American ones, and we could stand to practice it more here.  It really makes sense to extend one’s planning horizon beyond the span of one’s own life and think both in terms of tree longevity and of the needs of generations to come after us.  The idea of getting young trees established under a mature stand seems particularly apt at on a school property, where adults are fostering the growth and education of children, and tending the young beings who will one day assume adulthood.

So the failure of this planting, installed with apparently the most admirable of motives, seemed especially poignant and distressing.  The tree species selection seemed fine, but it looked as if almost every other element of a planting — root ball size, soil quality, well construction, mulch used (or lack of it), and watering — was inadequate to fulfill the aim of establishing a planting that would live and thrive.

It was impossible to miss this planting from the road below. Virtually every newly planted tree is either dead or nearly so.

From the school drive above the slope, the view is as disappointing. The pears look like the toughest of the new trees out there. Fall color in July is never a good sign, but at least they still have leaves. The zelkovas are mostly bare.

That pile of soil in the foreground is the native soil on this New England upland slope, thin and sandy, with little organic material evident. It appears that the new trees were planted directly into this soil without amendment -- which is fine, as long as the planting crew worked on the root balls to make a rougher interface between root ball soil and native soil. Because water will only move from soil of one porosity to another when the soil is saturated, and roots follow water, you want to scuff up the walls of a root ball to make a less distinct interface between the two soils, and to encourage water and roots to cross the interface.

Tiny root ball? Perhaps. For a 3" caliper tree like this , ANSI standards call for a 32" diameter root ball. The well on this root ball is about 18" in diameter, so it looks as if the root ball is small -- but it may simply be that the well itself is inadequate. Wells should be built outside the root ball wall, so that water is held over the root ball and over the interface between surrounding soil and root ball soil, and so promotes root growth beyond the root ball. Not to mention that these trees were placed right at the drive edge, where their root cannot spread out under the asphalt, and the weight and pressure of plowed snow can tip them...

Another tiny root ball, with a mini-well. The well is very loosely constructed; water has broken through and run down the sandy slope, leaving the tree high and dry. This photo makes me thirsty.

All of the trees are planted on sloping ground, but hardly look it -- another indication that root balls and water wells are too small. Got mulch, anyone? Particularly in this type of sandy soil, a watering schedule and at least a temporary irrigation system (set up to last and run through the first growing season) would help establish the trees. Planting like this has consigned what were once good trees to the chipper.

Egh. More of the same.

What good can be said of this planting?  Well, again, the idea of starting a new generation of trees in an established stand is an admirable one.  The tree’s root flares appeared to be in the proper relation to the surface of their root balls.  Otherwise, it seems to me that this planting is a cautionary tale:  against contractors who do not know how to plant properly, against too-small root balls, poor soils, substandard planting practices, bad tree wells, the absence of mulch, inadequate provision for watering, and inadequate watering itself.  The information on how to plant and foster trees is readily available, so the question may be how do we broaden people’s awareness of it, and their awareness that trees are living organisms rather than tall pieces of furniture?  Any ideas?

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To the beech

Posted in Arboriculture, Miscellaneous, Plant management, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I took a great class this past January at the Arnold Arboretum.  It was called Grafting Techniques for Ornamental Trees, and was taught by Jack Alexander, the Arboretum’s Plant Propagator.  Jack, who is not only an extremely talented plantsman but an excellent teacher, taught us how to prepare cuttings, how to make several different kinds of grafting cuts, how to fit scion and root stock together, wrap the graft point with an elastic band, and then wrap the whole shebang with Parafilm.

Anyway, at one point during the daylong class  Jack had us take a break from grafting and showed the class some slides.  Among them were shots of a grafting project that he had been commissioned, privately, to work on some years ago.

The tree, located on a property outside of Boston, was a 40-50′ high grafted weeping beech.  It had been top-grafted at a point about 5′ from grade; the trunk below the graft point was about 30″ in diameter, while the trunk above it was considerably larger.

Hartney Greymont, Inc., arborists in charge of the tree, had noticed flagging in the tree’s canopy in 1984.  They hypothesized that the roots could not get enough water up through the constriction to the tree’s crown, and that photosynthate was accumulating above the graft point.  They called in Jack Alexander to do some grafting that could help improve the situation.

The problem:  Constriction at the graft point was retarding the flow of water up to the tree’s canopy, and possibly preventing photosynthate from flowing down to the roots from the crown.

The solution:  Remedial grafting, using four beech saplings to create supplemental trunks.

The process:  In the fall of 1984, Hartney Greymont planted four 2-3″ caliper (3/4″ dbh) beech saplings around the tree, evenly spaced from each other and about 3′ out from the tree’s trunk.  The saplings settled in over the winter.   Jack, who had the experience and expertise to work comfortably with such a valuable tree, then grafted the tops of each sapling to the trunk of the specimen beech above the graft point. This process is called inarching.  Jack believes he performed the grafts in April of 1985.

The newly inarched beech, with three of the four saplings planted and grafted above the beech's graft point visible here. Matching the cambium of the saplings to the cambium of the mature tree allows photosynthate from the tree's crown to flow down the sapling trunks, supplying them with nutrients that otherwise would serve to overenlarge the beech's trunk just above the graft point, making the tree more susceptible to failure. The inarched saplings make a conduit for water to flow upwards into the canopy from the roots as they benefit from the abundance of photosynthate, and in turn enhance the tree's stability. Photo Copyright © 1985 Jack Alexander, used by permission.

The following year, one sapling had died, so Hartney planted another, and Jack grafted it to the tree in the spring of 1986.  A total of four buttress trees now help support the specimen tree.

The result:  Photosynthate flows down from the tree’s crown through the constricted graft point, as it always has, but it also flows down through the four inarched saplings.  Because the saplings are being nourished by the mature crown of the specimen, over the last 26 years they have come to serve as living buttresses to the mother tree.

In Jack’s words:  “By grafting additional rootstocks, we provided roots to provide more water to the top where it was flagging. The additional roots systems grew rapidly, tending to corroborate the opinion that there was a surplus of photosynthate accumulating above the graft union.”

A few weeks ago, in late April 2011, Carl Cathcart took me to see the beech.  The house had been sold since the beech had been buttressed, but the current homeowner was kind enough to let us see and photograph it.  Here are photos of it as it stands today.  It was wonderful to see this behemoth and to read its character, especially knowing its history.

Carl Cathcart with the inarched specimen weeping beech.

The beech from a different angle. What look like elephant legs under the tree are the ingrafted saplings that have now become living buttresses.

Three buttresses are visible in this image; the smallest is about 6" dbh. This photo was taken from about the same point as Jack Alexander's 1985 photo.

When I sent the photos to Jack, he wrote ” It’s nice to see these pics.  The tree seems like an old friend.” You can see why — this is a tree with personality, and Jack did some remarkable work with it.

Propagator/Grafter:  Jack Alexander

Arborist in charge:  Hartney Greymont, Inc. 

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Herbie: the next phase

Posted in Arboriculture, Plant management, Trees, tagged , , , , on June 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday I swung by the site where Herbie, the American Elm in Yarmouth, Maine, had stood for over two centuries.  Herbie was taken down last January; to read the tale see this post, and to see photos of Herbie’s stump, click on this link.

I hadn’t planned to stop and see the stump — what more could be said about a stump?  As the exit from Rte. 95 neared, though, I wondered if anyone might have put up any signs, or even if some of the woodwork from Herbie’s wood might be displayed on the site.

It wasn’t though, and in fact all that remained of the stump was an area, approximately 12′ x 18′,  of wood chips.  Herbie’s stump had been ground.  The adjacent road has been undergoing repaving, and stakes and markers dot the roadside and the edge of the chipped area.  We’ll have to wait and see what takes place now where Herbie once stood.

All that remains are wood chips, an open space, and a view of the utility pole.

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