15.1 Mother Oak
Firebush. Close but can't quite seem to get the same as I saw. The red was much more brilliant, because my eyes were able to filter out the brightness the camera saw in the background.
Mother Oak on the right, her daughter in the middle and the Master Cedar on the left, with the Guardian Pine peeking in from the top.
Bernie had been trained in California as an arborist and inspected her while he was working on the house. I was able to hire him to go up and give her a healthy haircut. It was magical to watch his dexterity, skill and attention to what he was doing. The two things I learned from him that have stuck is first a general rule that when a tree is near something you don't want it to fall on, you want about two thirds of the above ground mass to be away from the house and only about one third of the big branches directly in line with the house or other thing you'd rather not have the tree fall on, eventually. The second thing was that when trimming a downward growing branch, look for a twig up the branch that is growing up rather than down. Prune below the twig that's growing up.
Fall colors -- oak and a fire bush.
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Mother oak stands straight and tall.
That big branch seems to beg for a swing or something. And there's space under there for a thick layer of wood chips. In front some terraces and steps.
Application of software perspective correction also brings out the fact that the tree is taller than the first image implies. Note that the leaning is taken care of now. Much better would have been a view camera with full tilts and swings along with a large sensor.
The problem with wide angle, 24mm in this case, is that only the center looks right, the sides show distortion. See how the trees in the lower left seem to be leaning in, and the phone pole is also leaning in a bit.
The big mama oak is in full bloom while her children, behind the pine on the right, are just beginning to flower. The big oak gets more sun in the early morning and late evening than the children at this point. Below the oak is a redbud in bloom and below that a Russian olive is showing it will have lots of those tart berries later on. Under the oak on the left, that thick green bush is asian honeysuckle, considered an enemy of the state by Missouri and a few other midwest states. It greens up early in the spring with dense shade killing most native species that might grow under the redbud, for example. The Russian Olive is also considered an exotic invasive and it will spread, but not anywhere near as rapidly or as voraciously light robbing as the honeysuckle. This was one of those times I wish I had the Photoshop skill level to remove the telephone pole and wires.
Cleared the bush honeysuckle, a couple rose, poison ivy and some winter creeper in a zone about five feet around the base of the Mother Oak. Still plenty of other understory plants coming up. Ground covers can stay, but bushes go to edges, want most of the South side open, wood chips and very low ground cover. Working on eradicating bush honeysuckle. This set of photos is the work done east of the east deck and around the base of the Mother Oak. Where they were small enough to come out by the roots, I pulled them. Some I dug a bit and pulled. But the huge ones, more than an inch or two diameter at soil line, I cut and immediately applied roundup 18 % with a syringe, being careful to limit the liquid to the fresh cut areas. About 1cc per root clump. Update the next April. Mostly worked. One of the stumps came back vigorously, most of the others died.
closer view shows what appears to be a mud coating. I'm going to guess Stinkhorns: Phallus rubicundus since I found a photo of that which looks like this. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153985105993098&set=a.10153985093703098.1073741882.781423097&type=3&theater
