Recommended post: My Inner Moron Again by Sank

Does this happen at your house?

Emerald Ash Borer is ravaging the upper Midwest. The City came along a few months ago, waived the white flag and cut down all the ash trees lining the local street. I am determined to save my ash tree. She’s in a good spot, she has nice shade and it’s expensive to cut those things down.

This morning I was assigned the duty of figuring out what to do about inoculating the tree.

Truth be told I was given that task last August. It must have come up on her tickler file, or perhaps an article in the paper sparked her memory. Whatever, I got a no-nonsense reminder this morning.

So I researched.

Turns out you can treat a tree yourself if the diameter of the trunk is less than 20 inches. All you have to do is completely soak the ground around the tree with some insecticide that I’m sure is highly toxic and an environmental carcinogen.

Mrs S- “Don’t think about asking the kids do this soaking thing when they’re home, it has to be you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’ve had all the kids you’re going to have.” “So have you.” “You’re also worth more dead than I am so in the unlikely event that something goes wrong…”

She’d run rings around me logically.

She looked out the window “I’m not sure that tree isn’t too big?”

“Too big, bet it’s not even close”. I had a picture of the thing in my minds eye.

Went to look out the window with her.., apparently I don’t update my mental images often enough. The realization of which I condensed down to one word, “Shit!”.

“Get that measuring strip thing” I said. I was thinking about the tape measure in her sewing kit.  She was not. “Measuring strip thing? You mean a tape measure?” “Oh yeah that’ll work too”. She handed me one and out the door we went.

As we walked I pulled out about 4 inches of tape and held it up to her “Bet it’s more than 10 inches.” , Yuk yuk… “Sank, that wasn’t all that funny in 1985 and it’s still not all that funny”. “That’s what she said”. Haha. Sometimes living with me is like having a Journey song stuck in your head; it’s dated, you’ve heard it a million times, and even when it first came out, it wasn’t that good.

We got to the tree. It was pretty windy this morning and the tree was a bit bigger in person. Mrs S said “Note says 20 inches in diameter. I think we’re probably close”.

“Lemmie measure it then” I cheerfully replied and considered the problem man-style. I had a little sense of urgency as well because when we came out to measure the tree I didn’t put my shoes on like she did, and found myself standing in wet grass in my socks. Note to self ….

The tree was bigger than I could get my arms around, so I did this maneuver where I pulled out a good length of tape and whipped the tree with it. The idea was if I could whip it with one hand, while reaching around with the other I could grab the tape as it wrapped itself around the tree. Harder than it sounds given my uncoordinated nature and the high winds. And to Mrs S’s amusement, each time I did the whip maneuver I went a little farther around the tree. After making nearly a full circle I finally caved and asked her in a loving way “Any chance you could help here and maybe hold the tape.”

Silence. Head shaking. I know that look.

“WHAT?”

“As much fun as it is to watch you do this I have to ask, you do know the difference between circumference and diameter right?”

Guess who was silent now.

Gawd I hate it my inner moron comes out.

“Were you planning some fancy math to figure it or should we just measure the diameter?”                                                                  ,

“Dear, I just wanted to make sure I accounted for the arc of the trunk, we aren’t measuring the flat side of a square.. there’s geometry involved here you know”.

She came forward grabbed the tape measure, put it up against the tree “We’re also not splitting the atom, we can be a little off”.

Tree circumference, almost exactly 20 inches. “Honey” I said “With a circumference of 20 inches or rather 2x the radius if 10 inches I feel that we can safely treat the tree ourselves.”

She walked back in the house “I’m calling a guy”.

Which is fine with me.

 

 

 

Filed under: Life