Well, my second week has come and gone, and I feel like I have been less than adequate as payed help. Unusually, the best day of the week was a Monday. The picture on the right is the first task for the day. We went to a condo complex and pruned a whole bunch of storm damage. This 3-ledered maple proved to be a fun tree, and I was even able to jump to an Ash tree and do a quick cut on that. However, one of the three stems has so much damage I made the decision to cut it down. I then went over to an Arborvitae hedge that had been hit hard. I topped two broken leders, and then tied up a third that had bent all the way to the ground. It was so large, I had to make weight cuts and have my ground-man use a come-along to winch it up. I uploaded a picture of the hole that was left from the damage.
The next three days, we spent at another condo village and pruned 5 groupings, or short hedges, of White Pines, and one group of hemlock. The first day went well, and as usual my neck was sore after staring up all day, but we got 7 trees done out of 24 or so. We ran out of gas in the chipper and called it a day. The second day went even better because of the amount of help we had. We blew through six more trees, but ran out of room in the chip-truck for all the chipped brush from that day and part of the previous days brush. That day I decisded to try out the new company A-shirt. Well, it would have been great if I remembered sunscreen. 
Needless to say I got really burned, so I am red and white striped. The last day is where the blues set in. My boss had me climb one group of pines and top them while he did another group. On my last tree, I was having trouble getting the tops out of the tree. Well, as I let one go, it got caught, flipped, and the butt-end went crashing through a side window of the condo. Needless to say, I had a bit of the blues after that. My boss took it in stride and we discussed what should be done in the future to prevent accidents like that. On a surprising turn, the condo residents were not very mad about it. 
Infact, the wife came out and gave us all homemade whoopi pies! It was definetly one of the best I have ever had. I took a picture of my co-worker holding his up.
Needless to say I got really burned, so I am red and white striped. The last day is where the blues set in. My boss had me climb one group of pines and top them while he did another group. On my last tree, I was having trouble getting the tops out of the tree. Well, as I let one go, it got caught, flipped, and the butt-end went crashing through a side window of the condo. Needless to say, I had a bit of the blues after that. My boss took it in stride and we discussed what should be done in the future to prevent accidents like that. On a surprising turn, the condo residents were not very mad about it. 
Infact, the wife came out and gave us all homemade whoopi pies! It was definetly one of the best I have ever had. I took a picture of my co-worker holding his up.On Friday, my boss and i went spraying while my co-worker stayed back and fixed up the equipment. We got quite a bit done, and I was even given a walk through tutorial on spraying a cherry tree for Winter Moth and a Mugo Pine for sawfly. With any luck I'll be able to get my applicators licence for the State this summer. We then went and did a couple of specialty spray and fertilizer jobs. For two, Dwight (Dewey) my boss, made up his special fertilizer blend, the Dewey Delight*. I won't give out his recipie, but he has put years of experiance into this blend and it gets the job done!
Another week gone by, and we are looking foward to what the summer has to offer. Some good pruning jobs lay ahead, a little more fertilizing, some right-of-way clearing for the town of Uxbridge, and as always, some take-downs. I cant wait!
Peace,
T-Bo
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