I just paid a hefty price to have a 14” caliper Acer miyabei ‘State Street’ removed. Were I a smarter person, this could have been avoided. Or, at least, if I were less busy. Multiple signs were ignored. Many opportunities were missed. It was, I must admit, the result of me  being me–a person who apparently needs to make every mistake twice. Sometimes more often than that.     

My doomed ‘State Street’ Acer miyabei maple in 2009, three years from planting.

The tree last summer. Almost a year to the day of the derecho. One year away from its doom. 

Mistake #1: An impulse buy!

I bought my ‘State Street’ during my plant collecting phase. Although I didn’t know much about my new investment, I did know three things. It was new, a maple, and cheap. The holy triumvirate!

Mistake #2: Making Assumptions

At that time, the only other Acer miyabei I had seen was a scrubby little thing at Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum. It was small and barely growing, so I assumed it would get to about Japanese maple-like size. I had books and other resources. I could have checked them, but I didn’t. I was too busy. So one day in the spring of 2006 I scratched out a little spot and planted it. That first year, it produced a new shoot that shot out 3’ long and so I knew it would outgrow its space.

Sometime later, I saw this miyabei maple at the Morton Arboretum and I really knew trouble was brewing.

Mistake #3: Not Acting on My Foresight

Did I then move the tree or cut it down while it could still be easily done? Nope. Thought about it. Didn’t do it. As usual, I was busy.

Mistake #4: Making a Dumb Excuse

The winter of 2006/2007 was especially mild. From January to mid-April, it was downright balmy. Little or no frost. 60s and 70s. 80s even. Everything leafed out several weeks early, even many of the native trees that usually know better. Then came the Easter Freeze! A week of 20Fs with some teens included just for their entertainment value. Everything got defoliated. My Acer miyabei died back to a few feet above the ground.

Of course, it came back hard. It had vigor to spare, as I had learned. And now it had five leaders, not a measely single one, all sprouting from the point of dieback. As a certified Arborist, I knew that structural pruning back to a single leader was necessary. Did I ever get around to doing that pruning? I did not. Too busy. Plus! Upon further consideration, I thought it made the tree aesthetically more interesting. Much more interesting! Yep, that’s what I told myself because I was “too busy” to snip four shoots off to leave just one.

Miyabei maples are quite ornamental.

Mistake #5: Years of Self-Inflicted “Blissful and Willful Ignorance”

Years went by. Like 20 of them. Years in which I watched those five leaders spread, grow large, compete, and form a nifty little pocket between them that held water. I knew this was happening. I saw it with my own eyes. I knew this wasn’t good. Periodically I would even poke sticks down into the rotting heartwood in an effort to find the depths of the decay. Never hit bottom. Did I do the math? Did I add all these things up to the inevitable sum total? I didn’t. Because I was busy. And, like some people don’t get a lump checked out because they’re afraid of the results, it was somehow better to just put it out of my mind. Instead, I chose to counterweigh all those arguments by noting how vigorous and healthy and outrageiously fast growing the damned thing was. Incidentally, through at least those first 10 years, I could have cut the tree down myself. In a couple hours. For free.

Apart from carpeting the ground with its golden yellow foliage, my miyabei maple sometimes made an annoyance of itself by dropping a ton of pollen and a blizzard of samaras.

Mistake #6: Wanton Inaction

In just this last year or two, I began to think about doing something about this ever growing, wide spreading, half-rotten tree that was looming over me, my family, my car and my house, and, worse, also my ‘Venus’ dogwood, a ‘Donald Wyman’ crabapple, and three Chinese fringetree. Those last things were, in fact, my main motivation for writing “Get quotes for removal of Acer myabei” on my ever rotating lists of things to do. Of course, I never did get those quotes because other things on those lists always took priority. If only I had the time to make those calls. But I didn’t because I was, you guessed it, too busy.

The Comeuppance

Then in August, about a month ago, a freak derecho came. We never used to have those. We didn’t even know the word. Now they are too familiar. 70-80 mph straight line winds came out of nowhere. Knocked out power for four days. Thousands of trees down in the city, hundreds just within the neighborhood, and my ‘State Street when I pulled in the driveway?’ Still standing and looking good! Until I took a closer look. Beginning at the point where those five leaders came together, the place where water collected, and where I suspected/knew rot was happening, there was a huge crack. It was as wide as my fist at its worst near the top. It gradually became thinner as it neared the ground. On closer inspection, there were actually four more cracks in between each of the five leaders. How it was still standing, I do not know.

The final blow was a derecho that knocked down a lot of trees and power lines in both directions down my street.

A neighbor’s tree.

Being an arborist and having others in my orbit, I knew that all the tree companies were out doing rescue missions far more urgent than mine, so I removed as many of the branches that were looming over the house as I could with a chainsaw on a stick, bad back be damned. Sometimes standing in the bed of my Maverick pickup with the business end at full extension. Then I found my five 5,000Lb rated nylon ratchet straps and stitched everything I could together. Believe it or not, this worked! It actually tightened up the cracks! When the cavalry came, the real tree pros, they actually commented on how perfectly my strap placement supported all the stress points. I’ve never been prouder. 

The crack caused by included bark and decay, which sourced back to my failure to corrective prune two decades prior and multiple other opportunites to do something. 

What I could safely remove while I waited for a tree company to come.

What I hauled to the county composting facility. What the tree company took was so much more. 

My elaborate nylon ratchet strap rigging that held things together.

Eventually the tree company came and removed the tree. 

The Lesson for You

Don’t be like me. Believe what you see with your own eyes. Know what you’ve learned from credible sources. Know that prolonging inaction only makes things worse. 

The Lesson for Me

Things I’m good at: making excuses, choosing ignorance, wallowing in inaction due to being busy.

Things I’m bad at: making smart decisions and acting on them.

Will I ever change? Seriously doubt it. I’m too old, I’m not as sharp as I used to be, I have no time or energy.

And, yes, I do see the irony in that.