Tree Planting Tribulation

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Tree Planting Tribulation

Mother Nature’s Moment June/July 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

This time of year we find ourselves on a lot of properties that have young trees that are struggling or dead. As arborists we are the ones that get called in to diagnose, treat and in the sad cases do post mortem on trees that were installed less than two or three years ago and have just not survived. The reason we get called instead of the folks who installed the trees is because the infamous “guarantee” has expired along with the tree.

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Poison Ivy Primer

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Poison Ivy Primer

Mother Nature's Moment
© 2017, 2011 text and photos by Lesley Bruce Smith

This season finds many of us out in our gardens or in local forest preserves, with fall color not far away.  Since we spend a good deal of time in your yards, as well, we know that there is a lot of poison ivy out there, even more with all the rain we have had.  As professionals, we realize that the best way to avoid this often agonizing malady is to be able to identify and stay clear of the plant.

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Trees Are Tribal

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Trees Are Tribal

Mother Nature’s Moment May 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

The longer we work with trees the more amazed we are at their ability to communicate, not only with us, but with each other. This seems like a ludicrous idea to many, simply because trees’ ability to communicate is not like our own. They do not use words, yet as we learn more about the way they communicate, it is surprising and often astonishing. They are so much wiser than we think.

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Spring Reminder

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Spring Reminder

Mother Nature’s Moment, April 2018
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

We all wait, not so patiently, for the warmer weather and spring time flowers. It is certainly one of our favorite times of year. The trees and shrubs are ready to explode, having worked very hard last summer, when the sunlight was at its zenith, creating all the buds that are full of sugars and about to burst out into flowers, leaves and eventually fruit. The key here is to remember that this year’s flowers and leaves were created last year, so if autumn or spring clean-up includes “shearing” the outside of the  shrubs, most of the flowers will go away. A sad thing that we see repeated EVERY year.

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Fertilizing Facts and Fiction

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Fertilizing Facts and Fiction

Mother Nature’s Moment, October/November 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

This time of year we often receive calls from individuals requesting to have their trees fertilized. Fertilizing one’s trees seems like such a good thing to do for them, and yet there are so many misconceptions about tree fertilizer that, as arborists, we often are trying to bring clarity to this area of tree care.

The first thing we need to understand about fertilizer, or the first fact, is that it is NOT tree food. Trees make their own food from the energy of the sun!! This is actually science we learned in the second grade but many of us have forgotten it, or at least, have forgotten the ramifications of that fact.  

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Selecting the Right Person to Trim Your Trees

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Selecting the Right Person to Trim Your Trees

Mother Nature’s Moment - July/August 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

A few weeks ago a friend of ours who lives outside our service area asked me about how to choose someone to trim his trees. His inquiry came in like this…

We’d actually like a filtered referral. A couple of years ago a friend at church hired a tree trimer and afterward felt that both he and his tree had been scalped. How do we decide if a big franchise or landscaping company will do any better or worse than a man with a rope and a chain saw? What questions should we ask?
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Spring Weather and Your Trees

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Spring Weather and Your Trees

Mother Nature’s Moment - July/August 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

I don’t know if you have noticed, but we seem somewhat overwhelmed with how the rain and sun and rain, and rain and rain and sun have created huge amounts of growth on all our trees and shrubs, and all yours too!  The trees and shrubs love mild (not too hot) moist conditions which trigger them to put out lots of green leaves=food producers=water evaporators.

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Trees and Air Pollution

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Mother Nature’s Moment - May/June 2017
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

Gilbert has discussed the phenomenon of Witches Brooming on trees. It is essentially one of the trees’ reactions to pollution. But he did not mention the fact that one of the amazing and now proven facts about trees and air pollution is that most deciduous trees have an amazing capacity for absorbing our pollution.

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Trees are Good for Us

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Trees are Good for Us

April 2017 - Mother Nature’s Moment
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

As someone who has just spent the last 2 years having to be VERY intentional about recovering from both a severe bicycle accident and a breast cancer diagnosis it seems fitting that I would write about the benefits of trees on our health.  

I’ve noticed a large number of people posting about Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, which became part of a national health program in Japan in 1982 and essentially just means being in the presence of trees.

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Coming Back from the Ashes

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Coming Back from the Ashes

Mother Nature’s Moment
by ISA Certified Arborist: Lesley Bruce Smith

As many of you know, I have just recently passed the one year mark of my breast cancer diagnosis.  I am happy to report that although the work is as yet unfinished, all my one year scans are clean and clear. This is good news and worth celebrating. Yahoo!

At the beginning of this journey I just kept thinking I wanted to “get back to normal”.

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Amazing Trees, Amazing Me!

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Amazing Trees, Amazing Me!

Mother Nature’s Moment - April 2016
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA certified arborist

I have spent the whole of my professional career explaining to people that trees are amazing organisms with an innate wisdom. This requests of us that we approach them with humility, and recognize that they have the ability to heal themselves far beyond what we are capable of understanding.  As a result, we seek to be careful observers of the natural environment and do our best to mimic that in our home landscapes in order to provide the best possible home for our tree friends to survive and thrive.  

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An Invitation to a Different Kind of Journey

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An Invitation to a Different Kind of Journey

Mother Nature’s Moment

by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA certified arborist

As many of you know, nine months ago, I sustained a litany of injuries in a serious bicycle accident. We were so grateful for the many ways you were patient and caring in that difficult time. Unfortunately, I need to ask for your patience and understanding yet again. On February 2, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully, we caught it early and it is in initial stages and very treatable. However, no one wants to hear their name and the word cancer in the same sentence. This is a journey I would rather not be having to make.

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A Word About Winter Storm Damage

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A Word About Winter Storm Damage

Mother Nature’s Moment

by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA certified arborist

Why is it important to repair damaged and broken branches in the winter? You might be surprised to learn why.

In the unexpected and heavy November 2015 snow storm we experienced a large amount of tree damage. As I have been driving around the North Shore it is obvious that many of the broken or hanging branches have not been attended to. The reason it is important to “repair” these damaged branches NOW is because without leaves the damage is easier to see and it is easier to correct.

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Doing the Right Thing

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Doing the Right Thing

Mother Nature’s Moment
October/November 2015

Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

This fall I received a startling reminder of one of our core values as a company.  I drive a Volkswagon Jetta TDI, which was sold to me as a clean diesel engine with fabulous gas mileage.  For the last four and a half years I have been happily driving my car, thrilled with the sense that I was not polluting the air and getting terrific gas mileage of around 40 mpg. This month’s news has been saturated with stories about VW making choices over and over again to “do the wrong thing”.  To cheat, to lie to their customers and their dealers, and to the governments in the countries where they sell their cars. Yikes...what were they thinking??

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Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

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Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

Mother Nature’s Moment

Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

Last week we flipped over from summer to autumn, when we enjoy warm sunny days and cooler nights just perfect for sleeping. As arborists we also begin to notice that the trees that are most under stress are showing us by displaying their fall color a little earlier than all their neighbors.

We cannot help but also notice that so many of the Ash trees we have lost from Emerald Ash Borer are being replaced by Maples.

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Gratitude and Leading with the Good

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Gratitude and Leading with the Good

Mother Nature’s Moment

by Lesley Bruce smith, ISA certified arborist

Sorry for the delay this summer of our newsletter, my bicycle accident has taken longer than expected for recovery. I am finally feeling more like myself with almost 75% strength and 90% range of motion in my recently broken arm and dislocated collar bone. Gilbert has been a champion these last months taking care of me at home and filling in for me at the office. I am very grateful to him. I am very grateful for my strong body continuing in the healing process and I am grateful for all of you, our customers.

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Trees That We Remember

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Trees That We Remember

Mother Nature’s Moment
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA certified arborist

As your arborist, you may remember me asking you if you have “any special concerns or things you want me to take note of” when we first reviewed your property together.  What I am really asking, or the question behind the question, is “Do you have a favorite tree? or “What are your stories with your trees?”  I often hear about an Arbor Day tree that was carted home by a small child, who is now grown and gone, and the tree stands as a living reminder of many good memories of family and loved ones. We have prepared many home landscapes for weddings that have used a tree as the altar or as a special photo opportunity for the bride and groom, or heard the story of a tree planted in someone’s memory.

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April is Arbor Day Month

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April is Arbor Day Month

Mother Nature’s Moment

by Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

Did you know that Arbor Day was first instituted by Julius Sterling Morton, in April of 1872, in the state of Nebraska. Mr. Morton, who was then a recent pioneer to the state of Nebraska from his home in Michigan, missed the beautiful green of trees. Nebraska was a prairie state and devoid of trees in the 1800’s. On that first Arbor Day in Nebraska, over a million trees were planted, many by the school children of the state. During the later 1870‘s other states passed legislation to observe Arbor Day and the tradition to observe it in schools nation wide began in 1882.

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Landscaping for Wildlife

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Landscaping for Wildlife

Mother Nature’s Moment

text and photos by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on the management of our landscapes for wildlife. When we think of wildlife in “our habitat” areas we often think of raccoons, chipmunks, deer, squirrels, rabbits, maybe even coyotes. You may be surprised to know that we have 159 species of mammals in Illinois, mostly rodents, but almost three times the number of bird species.  By my count, we have 448 bird species that have been found in Illinois.

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