Tony Croft aka hamadryad

oh boy!

been adding a few to the database myself, its a really important cause and we should ALL be recording those lod vets and ancients we find wherever they may be, you will be amazed at how many you can find in strange isolated pockets hidden from everyday folk, farmland is always a great place to look. I have found three more pockets of ancient/vets that I need to survey and add to the database but theres a lot of trees in these pockets and could use a hand, herts county if anyones up for it?

This job is not bad work, and anyone who thinks it is needs to go to green lane bovingdon to have a proper look IMO I will shoot it in spring, and post em. When deciding what a tree can take, there are lots of things to take into consideration, and this tree was in full youthfull vigour and as vital as it gets. The photo cant show you how little inner growth there was to this previously reduced tree, nor can you see ALL the fine growth as this tends to get burnt out against the sky. I have left more than enough leaf area in the upper crown to avoid sun scald and it is only those two or three phototropic limbs that have very litttle growth upon them. all of the cuts bar one, by the phone lines, are less than 50-60mm -30-40mm 0n average across and will no doubt be well occluded within two to three years as indicated by previous cuts. having allowed light to penetrate the crown inner growth willl develope allowing if done within three to five a much nicer framework. the client isnt always right, and thats what your there for I have done the absolute best job possible with what he asked for which was to remove as much as possible without harming the tree. I will prove this over time with progressive images, just for proving this as I had no idea this was going to become such a long thread and was just venting my fustration!

I was just playing, survival in the real world isnt easy, nor would i hold it against anyone doing a bit of fencing, or turfing etc to make ends meet, but i stand by jack of all master of none, otherwise builders would do the sparks and plumbing as well as the building!

Thats just it though, I cant just take the money and forget about it. i take a lot of pride in what I do, and go to great lengths to ensure i both do whats right for the customer and tree. when i do a great job and the customer is less than 100% satisfied I feel i have not done my job to the best of my ability, and failed in a key skill at the start, communication. I dont get it wrong often, but it still bugs me when it happens!

Utter twoddle! thats the most BS youve ever said to me, anyone would think i had left epis sticking out of a two foot diameter pollard cut! lol What planet are you on shrek?

gibbon, I reckon thats 50% of leaf area, but it was done previously and showing great vigour and vitality, with all old wounds well occluded, thers wasnt much growth internal in the lower crown due to regrowth shading it out, and hence the phot tropic lower limbs, which I have a twisted back for lim walking on snowy branches. Yes it was logged in the book for those into that kinda thing!

You missed the point! I would have cut off less, but he specificaly demanded AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, without harming the tree, he also didnt want to do it again for another ten years! This client was so adament that he knew best the spec wasnt finalised until we turned up to do the job, he was that difficult! When clients make the spec, thats THIER doing, the work I did is bang on what he ASKED for! but he wasnt 100% convinced!

OI! Thats naughty! personaly I think i will steer clear of the fencing. landscaping and trees lopped and topped proffesion! jack of all, master of none.

I love that ladder!

So the guy says take as much as you can off the tree, a nice purple beech, cut it as hard back from nieghbours as poss. Apparently i took too much off! I removed less than a yard of chip and four barrow loads of small diameter logs for his fire!

LA work has ALWAYS been done at cut throat prices, its a mugs game fit only for serious big contenders in all but the smaller parish councils. This as some rightly point out is a speed and efficiency game not one of high quality, I know ive been there done that, 17 lime strips a day to make a decent wage for me and my groundie in ealing. The future of our business? Diversify? I think there are so many diverse areas of our business it has plenty of scope for making a buck via a bit of marketing and business acumen. The big firms will always rule the LA work, the little guys bending the rules will always be the ones working 7 day weeks for cash trimming the old girls hedges and the medium sized firms that survive will be the ones that truly become masters of utilising and marketing all the have and do to the enth degree. When you look at what some of these lads in here do with a bit of scrap material the potential for making profit from waste is mind boggling. The business is far more technical than ever before and its going more and more so, getting up to standard and being cutting edge will always have the advantage of a captive client base and premium rates. Professional people are and always will be in HIGH demand

at the end of the day, no ones going to pay a wage to a guy who is going to need 6 months input, time and money before hes up to speed! would you?

doesnt mean squatt in the real world fella, if I cant write a decent report and make pretty plans on cad, i aint worth a wage, no matter what i know about trees and fungi!

thats a great little book, and if you like that one youll also like oak- a british history.

I want to buy a microscope a fractometer and cad so i can self teach but thats a lot of money that I havent got.

yes I am aware of this one, and though i will apply, I dont know if I am really going to match the experiance level of other candidates so keeping my options open. That is a dream job for sure, but imagine how many will apply! 5k for cad plus 600 a year! no wonder it isnt an everyday application! Going to sit the tech cert exams in sep am doing an online degree now ( first year), tech cert will fill the gap. It aint easy to get progression in this game, its too costly in cpds at 250 a day training cpd events, 1300 a year in degrees, 1000 a year on books what chance have we got?

Personaly I like the old mole, hard working little critter and cute as a button.

I asume the idea with this is that we will be able to work out the loads on each rope in a pendulum rigging scenario, as in as the angles change etc. if the two lines being equal in angle the load should be distributed evenly between the two lines? increas the angle of one and the load share increases in its uneven distributions?

Its o.k, with guys like that working it only serves as a reminder why you hire profesionals!

I have tried previously to get a position as trainee consultant, but lacking experiance has held me back. I have no CAD skills, no experiance of report writing, BS5837 reports etc, is there anyone out there that could offer me a position to work towards a consultancy full time position? my current lead climbers position does not enable progression nor the possibility of gaining the experiance or CPD to work towards it. I would work for free in an on/off basis, holidays weekends etc as any skills experiance gained will help me progress my Degree work. idealy however i seek a fulltime position as a trainee consultant, or climber with progresion possible, with a view to having a bias in mycology and tree/root safety assesments. I need a job that will no longer hold me back or hinder me, one that allows no cieling to my progress and experiance oportunities. i feel fustrated and caged and feel a great desire to progress, but I need help and support as financialy I am incapable of doing this alone.

Am i not understanding this right? if i enter load as 1000kg the blue line at 90deg andf the red line at 45 deg it says the load on the blue line is 1000kg and on the red it is 1414.21kg is this suggesting that it will require 1.4 times the load wieght in force to move the load via a force applied to the red line?

I like the sounds too, great little find that one.