janey

Tut, tut my dear Ham, I hope you're not making broad generalisations about your poor, overworked TOs again?

Fingers crossed for you When will you know if you got an interview? If you don't make it to the short list, make sure you call or email them to get some feed back as to why. Ask for their opinion on your covering letter and CV and how they think you could improve it.

Sucker growth from the rootstock. It looks pretty like that, even it it wasn't intended

Ooh, nasty. Have you got any pics of the point of failure?

I think she will definately be my first choice when I have saved up my pocket money

It's the love and respect from all the arborists and contractors out there that makes the job worthwhile

Must be the company I'm keeping

I'll lend you my nephew who's doing an IT degree and has been working for the MOD. He can roll his eyes and sigh loudly at you, too

Distal - it means a point further away from the main body, eg, your hands are distal to your elbows. It's the opposite of proximal. I'm not using odd words just to sound smart, honest . I try to use exact terms when specifying work as there is no room for personal interpretation that way. In this case, distal to previous reduction points means slightly higher. As for the bracing, try to avoid doing that if at all possible for many, many reasons

I coudn't email you. I had the error message "could not perform this operation because the default mail client is not proerly installed". That's more to do with my PC settings than a problem with your email link

Hi M, ignore the above The tree looks like a cultivar of Prunus cerasifera . They are notorious for being riddled with Ganoderma, Phelinus,and Laetiporus and go on for years. There has at some point been a large shed limb at the crown break and there appears to be an associated decay columb due the the lack of xylem function It's hard to see from the pics how far around the trunk the decay is and how structually sound the rear side of the trunk is. It looks like there is enough functional wood to warrant keeping the tree for a while longer yet (if that's what the owner wants). What are the targets on the other side of the boundary fences? I'm guessing that they are average, low risk back gardens and not some high risk, 5 lane motorway? All in all, given the tree's species, condition and targets, I'd say give it a heavy reduction to slightly distal to the previous points and let it remain there for a few more years.

You lucky thing! Such a shocking colour combination of peuce and lime green, aren't they?

I've seen the book and pawed over it longingly on more than one occasion . However, I couldn't justify buying it when there are so many more practical books that I NEED first. I wonder if Ham' will it in his lending project at any point ?

Great post It's nice to see I'm not the only one who loves the beauty of bark. My fave is that of Betula albosinensis and Stuartia sinensis. Gorgeous. Acer griseum 2 x Bet' albo... Bet' utilis

Can you PM me where abouts, please, as I'd love to go and see it up close and prsonally

I was still at skool back then (just!)

[quote=Monkey-D;470268. I'm having a pop at the current system not the individuals. . On that we are in agreement . It gets very frustrating reading posts having digs at their TOs from people who sometimes have very little idea about what the job entails and the contraints involved. I'll have that debate with you at Bromley

Happy Birthday I see you are treating yourself to a morning on AT to celebrate

Before you start catagorising most TO's at lazy, ignorant, uneducated and uncaring abour tree retention etc, YOU should actually try the job for yourself! I'm not saying that there aren't people like that in the TO sphere, but they are the minority and very unpopular. Not so very different from the arb' industry in general, eh? There are huge time and budgetory constraints on what they can achieve and the levels of red tape and beurocracy are unbelievable. They are there to serve their residents best interests and sometimes their hands are tied as to what they can and can't do. Try the job for a bit, and you'll soon realise how frustrating it can be at times. Quite often you have no real choice in what you do and that you can be left very unhappy with the work you have signed off. I always had tree retention, habititat creation etc etc as a priority, but sometimes it's just not feasable, for whatever reason. Rant over

A couple more from the jungle

Thank you . We've got quite a lot of wildlife in our back garden, considering I live in the suburbs of London. We've got even more now since the Cat passed away and doesn't eat everything.

Are you refering to this one particular TO or all LA Arboriculturalists? I thought I'd better ask this before I go into automatic defensive mode

How very dare you... I feel everyone of my years some mornings, and more!

Then you must be doing it wrong if you think you need more exercise in your life !

I'm glad to see it's not just me who watches far too much TV No, I hadn't noticed that, but on a slight tangent, did you notice that in one of the M&S ads from last year they used "Ichycoo Park" for the music, which is a song about getting high and the Waitrose ad that used "Golden Brown". Just what, exactly, were they trying to sell us???