Dead branches on female box elder tree

Last month I posted about cutting branches off the box elder trees over my patio. They are male box elder trees.  This Spring I had been watching the female box elder at the south of the house.  The female tree drops its seeds when the leaves come out in the Spring.   A number of seeds weren't dropping.

I kept an eye on the tree.  Most of the leaves are now out, but a number of branches did not leaf out and the seeds drop.  This past Winter and Spring has been hard on the trees.   I never had this happen to the female box elder tree before.

In early June.

Last week I got my pole saw out and trimmed a number of the dead tree branches with seeds still on them.  I also trimmed a few branches on one of the box elder trees over the patio.  The branches had leaves on it, but not much.  Due to my previous branch trimming the rest of the tree is sprouting lots of new leaves and new branches all over the other branches and the tree trunks.  So I trimmed a couple of sparely leafed branches.

Female branches on the left.  Male branches on the right.

Here is another view of my box elder trees near my house.

By the house on the left is the female tree.  On the right is a male tree.  Behind the female tree you can see the male trees next to the patio stick up.  The lower part of the male trees behind the female tree has more leaves.  From this side of the female tree the leaves are good.  It was the north side of the tree that was iffy on some branches.

Walnut trees

The young walnut tree is doing fine.

The old tree... not so fine.

Here you can see splits in the bark in a few locations.  Apparently this is due to the very cold temperatures we had this past Winter and last Winter.   I cut a few of these branches off the tree.

Near the base of the trunk, the tree is trying to grow again.  Two shoots - on each side of the tree.   I hope the tree makes a comeback and survives another Winter.

I looked closely at the walnut tree because when I harrowed the corral today my tractor's bucket, raised high to avoid the fence, hit a few of the walnut tree branches.  The branches snapped off as the branches were deader than I thought they would be.

Also when taking the walnut tree photos I also took a photo of my box elder trees by the house.  The light from the setting sun made them look good.

Box elder trees: Before and after

I think I am done trimming the box elder trees.  I'm trying not to look much at the trees, but when I do, I am not seeing branches I should or care to cut.   The ones I see as small dead branches are at the very top of the tree and I can't reach them.

Here is a view before I started trimming the trees back in 2022.  This was when I only trimmed from a ladder.  And before I used the lift in 2023.

Here is a view of the trees last year after I had used the lift to trim the trees.

Here is the view before I started the trim this year.

This is how the tree ended up looking after I was done trimming.

Here is a side view of the trees.

I took these photos from my fruit tree area for another angle of the trees.

Here is a view of different, much younger, box elder trees I did not trim this year.  You can see how lush the trees should look.

Mark had called my trimmed trees "Charlie Brown trees".  For now maybe, but they will look better after they grow out in a year.

Final box elder branch cut for now?

Earlier I mentioned that after sweeping debris off the patio roof I noticed another box elder tree branch to cut.  And I did so.  Then I noticed another branch.  Another branch looks to be dying from the end.   Years ago I had trimmed it back.  Last Fall on the machine lift I cut the branch back a bit more.  Now it appears to be dying further back.  It doesn't help the branch that the bottom of the branch has lost its bark.

So I decided to trim the branch back even more before I do some repair work on the patio roofing.  The branch is a thick branch.  Thankfully a relatively lower branch.

Yesterday I cut a short section of the branch.  It took an hour or two to make the cut.  Another very windy day.  The cut branch fell and the patio roof survived.   Today I cut the second - and hopefully last - section.  This time the patio roof suffered damage.   And it was yet another very windy afternoon.

The branch to be cut is in the middle of the photo.

After I already cut the first part of the branch.  Again the branch to be trimmed is the shorter branch in the middle of the photo.

The patio roof before and after.  The metal "bar" holding the sheet metal down in the wind is a former smaller gage railroad track.  Someone in the far past had cut the track into short lengths to use as fence posts.  I had replaced them when I had rebuilt that fence.

The roof support board was split in several places.  Here is one place.  I then had to spend time fixing and re-nailing the board.  I added more support for the board.   I also then found two other boards elsewhere that had been damaged / cracked from earlier branch falls this past week. They were not as damaged as this board.  I fixed them also.

The two large sections are from this branch.  The thinner branch was the earlier branch I cut a few days ago.   Tomorrow I plan to chainsaw them in shorter sections.

Now I think I got the last box elder tree branch cut - for now.  I need to stop looking at these two trees.

Yet another box elder branch cut

I thought I was done cutting branches from my box elder trees next to my patio.   But once I finished sweeping all the debris off the patio roof I looked up.  I saw a branch I had cut last Fall when on the machine lift.  The end of the branch looked like it was dying.  Well, let's see if my pole will reach.  And it could.  So I cut this branch.

It wasn't as thick as many of the other branches I cut recently so it only took me an hour or two to cut the branch.  I didn't have to use all 27 feet of the pole saw to reach the branch, but what slowed me down a little was that it was very windy this afternoon.  Even out on the Great Plains they would say it was a windy day.  I was standing on a ladder to cut the branch.  When the wind really gusted I stopped and held on to the ladder and branch the ladder was against.  I'm getting old as I don't want to fall as I was way up there.

Before and after photos.

I had put a few metal sheets on the patio roof.   But not at the right spot as you can see.

Here is the cut branch after it fell through the patio roof.

After I cleaned up the cut branch I called it a day.  The strong wind was really annoying to me so I went inside the house and closed the windows.

More about the box elder trees

A few more photos of the box elder trees.

This photo shows the remnants of a branch I cut last Fall all the way back to the main trunk.

While the tree may have had some dead branch ends up high, the trees are alive.  The branch trimming I have done is making the trees put their energy for new leaves elsewhere.

I'm still doing some cleanup work.  I got 3/4 of the patio roof swept and clean of small branches and debris.  I'll finish tomorrow.  I took off a number of the extra metal sheets for now.  Once I am done with the roof cleaning I will put some of the metal sheets back on the roof as some of the fiberglass sheets are cracked or broken.  And it is hard to move around the roof without cracking or making holes in the fiberglass panels.

Final tree branch cut

Sunday I finally got the final tree branch cut from the box elder tree.   The previous tree branches I had cut took up to a day to cut.  I figured this bigger branch would take up to two days to cut.  It took longer.  I started the cut last Wednesday evening.  I cut on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and finally got the branch cut Sunday evening.  I didn't spend all day each day cutting the branch as I had to take breaks from doing so.

The branch was 33 feet high.  I used the 27-foot pole saw and stood in the bed of my pickup.  This was the highest I could go on the branch for the cut. I would have preferred to cut a little higher up as the branch was thinner higher up, and higher up from the cut the branch was still alive.  But how the branch grew, where it was located, and where I could stand made it difficult for me to cut higher up the branch.  I didn't want the cut branch to fall on me.

Standing in the bed of the pickup meant the end of the pole saw was face high.  Due to the thickness of the branch the saw blade didn't travel much when cutting.  So my arms got tired quicker.  Or my shoulder got sore.  Or my back muscles got sore.  So I had to take a lot of short breaks.  And after a longer while, a longer break.  Cutting was slow going.

Another side cut of a branch.

The view as I cut.

This photo was taken shortly before the saw blade had screwed out of the pole.  How did that happen?  I then had to put my old metal pipe pole back together.  The one I had used to pull down the previous branch after the saw blade has gotten stuck in the cut.  This time I used the old metal pole with the "hook" at the end to push out this saw blade.

After I pushed out the saw blade, and before I reattached it to the pole saw pole.

The old pole I had rebuilt.  Fortunately I pushed out the saw blade before I tried to pull this branch down.  That is because when I tried to pull this branch down, it wouldn't come down.  A side effect was that the cut in the branch now mostly closed.  Good thing the saw blade was not there.  I then had to re-cut the cut.  At least this time the re-cut went way quicker than the original cut.  It only took me an hour and not almost four days.  Then back to making an original cut.  After another hour or so the cut closed and trapped the saw blade.  The wind switching directions didn't help either.

This time I was able to pull the branch down.   Yay!

After I had pulled the branch down. This time I didn't bend any poles.

This time when the branch was pulled down, the saw blade remained in the cut.

Here is the small piece of the trunk that held the pole saw after I had pulled the branch down.  I cut this piece off before removing the pole saw from the cut.

There was no way the branch wouldn't fall on the patio roof.  That is why I was trying to cut the branch as high as possible in order to make the cut branch smaller.  Guess what?  The fallen branch fell onto lower branches and not on the patio roof.

One end of the fallen branch lodged in the "V" of the main trunk.  Why the branch fell back towards the main trunk is a mystery.   But it was a good thing.

Before and after photos of the branch I had cut.  The arrow points to the branch.  The next arrow points to where the branch used to be.

The left two-thirds of the photo shows the cuts I had made last Fall.  The right one-third of the photo shows the cuts I made the past few weeks.

Now to get the cut branch down from where it landed in the lower branches.  On Monday I cut the branch in half and it fell.  I had hoped the section that was stuck in the "V" would fall straight down and miss the patio roof.  Nope.  Everything fell ono the patio roof.  

In preparation for the branch fall I placed extra metal sheets on the patio roof.  You can see where the branch had fallen. 

Sometimes this was how things looked like to me when branches fall and I quickly moved.

The large part of the cut branch.  Amazing this little part of the branch held the branch up until I pulled on the branch with the pole.

This is how I had cut the fallen branch in the lower branch in half.  As you can see this is the dead part of the branch.

When the branch was up there high, I thought this was the remnants of a bird nest.  Nope.  This was some sort of branch deformity. 

The fallen branch.  Now to chainsaw the branch into pieces.   Guess what?  A new problem.  The chainsaw wouldn't start.  I then cut the two smaller branches using a handsaw.  Tuesday morning I tried the chainsaw again.  First I cleaned the spark plug even though it wasn't all that dirty.  After some effort I got the chainsaw started.  I didn't let the chainsaw idle as it seemed that if I did the chainsaw would stop.  I then cut up the branch.