Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Not sure whether today is a good day or a bad one. Certainly a windy day to be up a tree. After much palaver with the council our tree surgeon came today to do the work specified in a report provided by a man the council had employed as an independent assessor. After visiting the top of the tree and checking its condition against the report our treeman came to say the report was rubbish. He had rung its author to clarify a number of points and met with nothing but obfuscation. He then got in touch with the man in charge of the tree planning department and got him to come and see for himself. Here they are in the image - I've deliberately chosen this one partly because of several it best shows the size of the tree (a Wellingtonia, and they're less than halfway up) but also because it makes the two men anonymous by hiding them in the foliage. In the original the foliage near the men has quite a nice blurring effect due to wind motion in spite of a shutter speed of 1/250. According to our man if he did the work and extensive pruning set out in the report we would finish up with a very ugly tree looking more like a totem pole. The council man was naturally more cautious and diplomatic. The upshot is the tree hasn't been touched and I will need to pay our man a day's wage for nothing. On the other hand the council man is going to meet with the report's author, perhaps revisit the tree. If the council decide the work needed to make the thing safe will also make it look horrible, then they may suggest we apply again to have it felled. Which will be the result we've always wanted. So all-in-all I'm very grateful to our man for speaking up and getting the council tree department to think again so we may in the end achieve much more than if he had just gone ahead with the work. They've promised to proceed as fast as possible but I know what that means.