Ben90

That's the photoshop of the week!

Hooray! We spent yesterday checking up on a few planting schemes we'd done, almost every hawthorn had some greenery on it. Summer's on it's way, so I too might buy a pair of design A trousers.

Or butcher the legs off my old design Cs to turn them into chainsaw shorts I'm sure there's potential to justify it in the RA.

Ridiculous, pointless, yet interesting. Where would the tree grow from after being...ahem...replanted? The stem or the roots/new canopy?

I can see it now.

Billy 'MD' Elliot; the thinning of the old oak.

I've got a vague idea from the royal mail/parelforce site, prices are pretty reasonable with my guestimated weight of about 11kg. I don't think postage will be a problem.

Look forward to the pictures!

I'll probably take them both, it's a about time I got my own chainsaws. Do you have any pictures? Judging by weight and size, how much do you think they'll cost to post to Wiltshire?

Cool, I wondered what ripping chains were for and why they were 'sharpined' at like 10 degrees.

Although.....................Stuntfelling makes you skilled

I'll quote that to a client when I put a tree through their shed.

I agree with mester there, I don't think I've ever seen it on live wood. From what I remember it's more a 'detrivore' of the fungi world, never really attacking live wood.

Makes a great firelighter too

Oak before Ash, you're in for a splash,

Ask before Oak, you're in for a soak.

At the moment it's looking like a tie What happens then?

Don't listen to him.

You need to buy this shirt too, chicks dig that.

Hold on, what were we talking about?

but I think smoking is a very grey area

Play on words there?

When it comes to smoking in this job I think the only thing that matters is how close to the fuel cans you are.

Besides, cigarette smoke is hardly the worst thing we're breathing in...

Amazing. I especially like the book chair with an owl on it.

Great work.

I do not believe qualifications make you skilled, they give you a basic platform to work from thats all.

Although nowadays qualifications are more about arse-covering when the poo hits the fan. I know a guy with no NPTC's but boy can he cut & climb.

And I bet the only reason reading that made some of you guys wince is because you don't want him working for you due to the lack of said tickets. If so, point proven

ppe and ready for a work trial

What he said.

Real arborists surely don't have time for a sit-down interview. A trial shift is much more representative of a potential employee's skills, commitment and attitude.

Anyway, I'm sure he has his reasons. If it were me I'd wear a casual buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up, nice jeans and some normal (but clean) boots.

To me that says 'Hey, I can get my hands dirty, but you can still take me seriously cause I'm not dressed like a tramp'

Christ, I had hoped the gormless oxygen theives of my generation would be scared of tree surgery, now they're here making it even harder for younger arborists to get work!

Clearly the gene pool needs a bit of chlorine...

But through all of these pretty shocking stories, I hope you guys haven't given up taking on a young lad for a day every now and then. Granted, they're infuriating. If I had one of the chaps you described working for me it wouldn't be long before I threw him down the nearest riverbank. I blame the music they listen to.

But before long you'll find a decent apprentice with lots of potential, all they need is to be motivated and have initiative. Which nowadays might as well be classed as superpowers, but they're out there.

They look like scale insects, they feed off sap directly from the tree but I'm not sure if they can do the significant damage that you're describing, I believe a secondary infection might be to blame (something that got in through through the little holes in the tree the insects made while feeding) But I may well be wrong, it looks like a pretty serious infestation and plum trees aren't the most resilient.

If you want to control the scale insects, you can buy horticultural oil from farm shops and mix it with water before hosing the tree with it, this oil suffocates the insects. Try to get a good coverage.

Continue doing so each time there's an outbreak and see if the tree's condition starts to improve.

More adept arbtalkers may correct me, I'm only 20 so my pest and disease knowledge isn't quite up to par yet.

Are you going to patent the Hedge-In-a-Bag design? Pre-grown hedges that can be moved around at will?

Haha, I just needed to see the homepage photo on the Treehouse website to know that's American through and through

A heap of car tires at the bottom of the tree

Seconded on the keeping it simple, a few slings (inc whoopie), a capstan, a pulley block and a few meaty crabs.

I heard a very similar story from another client, except the hedges were twice as tall...and the chap who attempted it died. My condolences to him.

Anyway, there will always be some 'have-a-go's, especially in this climate. They can be in the form of gardeners who see us and make it look so easy () or Mrs Bloggs' 'we-don't-need-an-expensive-tree surgeon-darling' husband.

If you look at the column of ads on the right hand side of the screen and scroll down to the ad at the bottom which is just text, notice that it's called 'ads by Google' and that it convieniently shows results about trees.

I'm fairly sure that's the tracker ad and maybe it's having a bad day back on the google server since it's the cause of it being slow. The page won't finish loading until all the ads are present, luckily all the other ads look like they're 'hosted' on arbtalk's own space so would never be 'late for work due to the traffic' so to speak.

The pulley directs the rope efficiently through the knot and allows you to pull the rope taught from more angles. Squirrel's picture shows the rope going through the knot and then through a karibiner just below it, the pulley should be in the karibiner's place.

Seconded on the legs, they should be waay shorter. Mine aren't even half the length and i find them too long. What ends up happening is you put all the effort in to pull yourself up on an ascent, then when you let yourself down between each pull, the slack in the legs mean you loose like half a foot in height.

Squirrel, you wouldn't happen to be training at Norton Radstock College would you?

:lol:

Send it to YBF, might pocket £250 if they show it!

Just do it and if the client asks why it's bleeding, tell them that's why it's called a weeping willow.