Taupotreeman

Few from a Cedar dismantle today. There was an evil wind straight of the mountain but this was my first decent climb in a while and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Mine just arrived. Just over a week to get to NZ, not bad and very nice the T shirts are too. Well happy init.

Excellent attitude. Best of luck.

I found the tachyon too light and it tangles easily. Pain in the preverbial trying to flick it over a branch or drop it back down the tree. I've reverted to a heavier rope. Feels nice in the hand but I prefer a little more meat, especially for SRT so went for something a bit thicker. Also found it doesn't self tend very well when used with the SJ.

Still awaiting resource consent to be able to do any work but I'll post photos of any work once the job is completed.

Only just this minute finished watching it on the news. Looks horrendous. Thoughts go out to anyone and everyone involved or affected.

That's a better explanation than mine. It definately had a wobble. Had me twitching for sure.

Mike, the Spa Hotel is going but only just. It's in desperate need of a make over and most of the buildings stand empty. Tony, the Oaks, Ash etc I refered too are in a high profile area and the ONLY reason they are trimmed every year is for the view. We thought it better to remove and replace with a lower growing species that we didn't need to trim every year. We are only one crew to cover the entire Taupo, Turangi district so we need to cut down on maintenance wherever we can. TDC has had a habit of rounding everything over to maintain the views. Doesn't matter if it's Totara, Oak, Birch, Beech etc. If it blocks the view it gets topped. It sometimes grates that a tree that needs attention badly we aren't allowed to touch yet another that should be left alone has been hammered time and again. Back to the rubra; due to the emount of decay in it I think we are going to carry out whatever work we can from a cherry picker. Some of the branches are so decayed it makes me nervous just looking at them. Drew, not sure how high you got up the tree to put the globes up but when taking them out some of the limbs were moving way to free and easy for my liking.

Mike, the Pin Oak in this photo is one of about 10 along the lake front. All have sun scorch from being stripped bare of any growth year in year out. In addition there are three Claret Ash, a Birch and three Prunus that have the same treatment. They look awful and are falling apart. It has taken a year and a half, three council meetings, one council resolution, two media releases and I still have to go out with the councillor who planted them and get his approval before I can remove them. The preferance is the status quo of hammering the living daylights out of them every year. Now imagine me trying to get approval to remove one of council's most high profile trees. Never going to happen so we have to make the best of what we have however we can.

A couple more photos for you Tony. The last one shows where Stages had dug a hole 1.2m deep by 3m by 2m. That's after they done a few rounds with the digger around the base of the tree. There's two other holes about the same size within the drip line but we finally got a stop work. It's going to be a major trying to get any kind of work done on the tree without Council interferance so we trying to sneak it through and just go for it. And in defence of Mr. Bristow; It's unusual to see fungi in NZ woods and forests unless you're really looking for them. I noticed a lot of the fungi is dark in colour and tends to blend in with rotten stumps. Forests also tend to be a lot denser in undergrowth compared to the UK so that might be another reason

Tony, I have a few more photos that I didn't want to over load the thread with and that may be of more use. I'll load them tonight when I finish but the info so far has been a great help. As I say, council will definately not want to lose the tree and will look for every opportunity to preserve it so we need to look at that option first and foremost.

A few extra shots from today's review.

We are looking at replanting further into the park which is currently dominated by Cypress and Birch. Some of these are declining as well so we are taking the opportunity for a long term plan regarding removal and replanting. We are looking at transplanting in some Totara and Tanekaha along with a couple of Kauri. Rather than following on from past planting plans (mainly a whole heap of Pin Oak) we want to put back in what is native to the area. One part of the park is a bit of a wet area so here we are intending to replace the Birch with Kahikatea. As an aside; we are also removing a massive part of regen Pine in Spa park and turning that back in to a native block. As for the board walk; that won't be a go but discussion has started today on gaining resource consent to mulch as far out to the drip line as possible. We have some very well rotted mulch that has been building up at our depot so we are hoping to get the area fenced and mulch as much as we can.

Thanks for all the info so far. Huge help.Difficult to get decent soil from another site. The Taupo area has a huge pumice pan a couple of meters under the surface that a lot of tree roots can't or won't penetrate. This leads to having most of the roots heading out across the surface. Coupled with the fact that the trees are in high foot traffic areas there is a lot of compaction around the base so any form of soil extraction would be almost impossible due to the tight knitting of the roots. I took a whole heap of pictures today of the internal structure of the tree. Hopefully the photos will show what we have to work with. It looks like the tree has been heavily thinned and lifted at some stage so there is little growth except on the outer reaches of the leaders. With regard to removing the bracing; I have every fear that if we did this the multiple stems would fail almost immediately. I believe that the only thing currently holding the tree together is the bracing. Put it this way, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when the bracing was released. Mark, you're hoping at that price mate. I'd do it for half that if I got all the wood out of it. There's bugger all chipping in it as it's almost all firewood except for the last 3 to 4m. You might have to readjust your pricing. Or does that price take in to account airfares? Tony, if we could get some organic material from around another suitable Oak, I'm presuming this would be OK to go under some well rotted mulch? Maybe with some slow release fertiliser? Taking into account what I said about the pumice pan and the soil compaction I'd imagine the nutrient value of the soil around the area is pretty poor.

Tony, can you give me some more info on inoculation please? The area around the tree is severely compacted due to years of foot and mower traffic. I'll take some more photos today of the internal structure of the tree and the decay and get them loaded tonight.

I hear ya Drew and we know it's poked but unfortunately one councillor and much of the council hierarchy know better and won't entertain the idea of removal until someone gets nailed. Mulching is to be done pretty soon by mase and I. Pity we didn't get to it before Stages cat tracked it all. You know the state of some of those limbs so you'd understand the tricky situation.

Correct Tony. Some of the rotten limbs,although live at the tips, are on the point of failure and need to be removed. Problem is there's nowhere to actually cut back to as there is no internal canopy. Some of the branches that need to come off are 12 inches and over

We have a slight dilemma with this large protected Oak on council land and I need some help with options. The tree has been braced (Cobra) a few years ago but the bracing has now pulled tight. We considered re-bracing but on second thought figured that judging by the state of the base of the tree the new bracing would only pull tight as soon as the old was released. There are several substantial chunks of decayed wood and stems throughout the canopy. There are also signs of the stems starting to crack and peel away at the base. Not major but some signs all the same. To add insult to injury, some drongos doing a fibre optic upgrade broke through a water main and then took to the roots of the tree while attempting to find the broken main. Question is; do we just remove the deadwood and leave the tree to its own devices? Do we carry out a reduction to reduce the weight in the limbs and try and encourage new growth? This is a high foot traffic area so we need to have some sort of solution and one of our councillors is very against doing anything at all so we need to have good reasoning behind what we do.

Asian fella just died after staying awake for 11 straight days watching the Euros. Your concentration is poked at the end of a normal working day so after 22 hours I don't think I'd want to be doing anything technical or at height. Mistakes creep in real quick. We also had the same argument as Asplundh when they first brough in the testing as far as they weren't going to check for alchohol. It seemed somewhat unfair that they would test for all illegal substances but not if someone was pissed or hungover. The usual answer was the the other substances were illegal. I think that situation has been rectified across the board though. Couple of guys at Transfield got random tested a few months ago and failed the alcohol. Got fired on the spot due to Transfields strict no drugs no alchohol policy.

If this is what I think it is, is not so much as a con but the chances of you actually winning are few and far between. Some of the stuff goes dirt cheap but if you figure out how many people buy credits and end up using them all trying to get something cheap hell knows how much gets spent.

Just pee in a pot. Nothing major, all over in a couple of minutes and results are usually there straight away. A lot of companies have Random drug testing in NZ now, mainly forestry as they had a lot of accidents. I was at Asplundh when they introduced the drug testing several years ago and to be honest, it weeded out (no pun intended) a lot of the really bad pot heads. Everyone else either changed their habits or moved on. Most places offer counselling and rehab if you fail a test followed by a retest a few weeks later. Rarely is it a case of sacked on the spot except in the case of a serious accident.

To be honest I can't understand how anyone could work after a smoke. All I ever wanted to do was slob in front of the tv. I don't really miss it and sure as hell wouldn't work with someone who'd had a toke.

Bro you always NEED something

Bought a Canon MG5350 recently. Living in NZ I'm not sure if I'm way behind what's available to you guys but it does all I need of it and does it well. Prints awesome photos, wireless balh blah blah. Just chews the ink a bit and with five cartridges it can get expensive.

Primo. Strangely enough last time I ordered something from the Honeys it took longer to get from Auckland to me than it did to get from the UK to Dorkland. Hope your good on the sizes Steve.