Masters at their Craft

When my trees "see" this truck coming into our driveway, they know that the best of care is heading their way. Photo by Neil Sperry.

Published October 4, 2023, By NEIL SPERRY

This past Monday couldn’t come fast enough. When that huge limb blew out of our Red Oak early the morning of August 20, I immediately worried about the other shoe, pardon me, branch, falling right behind it.

When this huge branch fell from 25 ft. on August 20, it crushed a very heavy clay urn.

The first one had crushed a 42-inch-high ceramic urn filled with soil and toppled two others beside it. But otherwise, it had fallen harmlessly to the ground.

But the next big one above it, should it fall, would have taken out almost all the landscape along our driveway. A 40-year-old Glendora White Crape Myrtle, a semi-mature Chinquapin Oak, Hollies, and several dozen other plants around them. Plus, it probably would have torn the remainder of the mother Shumard Red Oak’s trunk to bits.

I called my friend Steve Houser, founder and owner of Arborilogical Services, advertiser here in e-gardens and on my radio program for 25 years. “That’s summer limb drop,” Steve told me. I’d never heard the term. Hey, I’m a dad, a granddad and a great-granddad. We’re always the last to find things out. But this is in my “field of expertise”, and I still didn’t know.

To read the full article, please visit Neil Sperry's website.