i have a huge maple in my front yard. it provides great shade and keeps my house cool all summer. provides a beautifull backdrop for bar-b-ques, fall color, spring green, and winter solitude. it is home to birds, squirrels, a play ground for our cats [and me :laugh: ], and generally proves no ill will on any. the only thing is, i want to rip it down and grind it up for mulch! winter time it sheds sticks all over my cars. spring time it sheds sticky yellow flowers all over my cars. summer time it sheds leaves, sticks, green seeds, and sap all over my cars. and in the fall it sheds dry leaves and brown seeds all over my cars. the little brown helicopter seeds manage to get into EVERY nook and cranny available! you might say"rob, why dont you just move your cars?". well, pilgrim, let me tell ya all about it...every yard on my street has maples. it is the most common tree in this town. and it proliferates like a weed. i have tried car covers, but i do drive my cars and so leave them uncovered when i want to use them. and i think the tree waits, biding its time ever so patiently, till i pull off the covers and then assaults my shiney,clean toys with a barrage of sticky, dirt trapping little pieces of compost! i dont dare detail my car in front of the house. the tree watches! and heaven forbid i let my car set over night, as when i wake up in the morning i will have a maple covered mess. and don't ask about wind storms, the little seeds become "inaccessable" driven into fenders, body molding and trim. i have found them under seats, in my trunk, and under the frame! there they peer back at me , mocking me, laughing as i try to fish them out with any small device i can find. i say we burn every maple , rip them down, remove the plague from the slightest chance of harming our precious paint jobs! :stmad: ....sorry, but with every one else venting, i thought i might share what REAL problems are...
i hear ya. my yard is full of 5 big buicks, about a dozen walnut trees, and 1 mulberry tree. i have easily 3000+ walnuts all over my yard right now and it makes it diffiicult to walk around in th yard bare-footed..
What, you don't have squirrels in MO??? I have one huge Black Walnut tree in my back yard, and the squirrels keep it picked clean. Anything that falls to the ground doesn't stay for long. There was a downside to that last year though. One squirrel managed to find/make access to my garage and filled up the eaves with walnuts! I managed to trap the little sucker before winter arrived, and "disposed" of him. I cleaned out his stash of walnuts, and it filled a 30 gallon garbage barrel!! :eek2: Needless to say, I found and fixed the access he had created, and had no problems in the garage this year.
Oak trees aren't much fun either. I have 2 of them, one is probably 200 years old. It rains acorns for about 4-5 weeks every summer. I can usually fill 3 or 4 trash cans with acorns that I sweep up off my driveway. And talk about squirrels! But, there is no way I could live in a neighborhood without trees, like a new housing development for example. I figure, it's the price you pay for shade. It's the Cottonwood trees I'd like to see disappear.
Get even with that sucker. TAP IT!! then you can make maple syrup from it's blood and put it on your pancakes. Well, one tree would probably do enough for pancakes a couple of times a year.:laugh:
Doesn't sound like nuthin' a 18" Stihl can't take care of. Heck! You can use the lumber to build yourself a new 4 car garage!! :beer
I agree.. trees are necessary. Maples aren't too bad, but NEVER park anywhere near a cottonwood!:Smarty:
Yup, Trees...can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em... Got a pecan that 'pees' all over anything within 30 feet, two months a year...but then again, this is West Texas, and real shade in June/July/August/September is worth an awful lot. Just wish our squirrels would get busy and clean up my front yard, can't go out there barefoot either. James
i guess i should be glad its not a chessnut tree..little mace balls falling all over the place:jd: and i suppose there could be a good side and a bad side to having coconut trees overhead what i need is a money tree!!!
Cotton Wood trees:af: Every summer it looks like it is snowing for about a week when the cotton wood trees are at it. Those little cotton fuzzies plug up everything and drift like snow... I get at least an inch thick layer of Fuzzies on my entire front and back lawn (and in my garage when the door opens). Did you ever light those fuzzies on fire..:shock: That stuff is like flash paper...:eek2: In the fall the cotton wood trees drop hundreds of 1 foot long branches everywhere, what a mess..... I love trees, but that thing has to go....
Just had a 45' cottonwood dropped from my yard this summer. it was blocking prime sunlight to my new pool, now i have one more 50' cottonwood at the back of the lot who didnt take the hint :Brow: its still dropping its leaves and branches.
cottonwood is pretty prolific along the rivers here. after the spring high water, when you float the river for the first time you always have to look out for the new snags of cottonwood that got washed out and into the river. it can be pretty dangerous if you get hung up in one. another tree good for making a mess is a pine. if you park under one of them you will always get a coating of pine pitch, needles, and depending on the time of year, the little brown flowers stuck all over the place. pine pitch is probably the worse stuff to try to remove. and the needles [like maple seeds] always find their way into the most inaccessable places.
