It's time for the neighbor's tree spraying, ughhh

[pcooley]

This is just a public rant. My neighbor is having her huge sycamore sprayed by the tree service again. They came by yesterday and told us to move our car and put our dogs in the house. I asked them if my honeybees would be safe, and that gave us a stay of spraying, but they called later to say they would do it at six in the morning next Thursday. That's before the wind begins to pick up. Then, they said we should put our dogs inside.

To my mind, if they are spraying something that makes the air too poisonous for a dog to breathe, they should not be spraying it.

Every year I speak to my elderly neighbor she says that she is not going to stop "caring" for her trees.

We just have a huge cultural disconnect. She is the only person I know who continues to use environmental toxins in an effort to make her yard healthier. It feels like a throwback to the ignorance of the 1950's to me, but enough people must still take that approach to support an entire industry.

And where does that leave me? Are my bees going to be OK, (they make it through the annual spraying every year). Should I dump my honey for a couple of weeks rather than sell it at the farmer's market? Will my chickens be safe? What about the spot where we sleep on the back porch? What about my children eating the peaches on our peach tree, which are just ripening?

It makes me so angry I can't sleep at night. We live through it every year, but it makes me feel like I am under assault.

[razz]

PC, is it possible to find an alternative type of spray/spraying company that might meet her want as well as be less harmful to you and yours?

[iris lily]

I wonder what she is treating the tree with. All of the sycamores here are not treated with anything.

I may ask DH. He used to work for a tree care company.

Wait--does she spray to keep the round ball thingies from forming? If so that's just stupid even though the round ball thingies are annoying. Sycamores are dirty, nasty things. The treatment has to happen at exactly the right time to keep the seed pods from forming.

[pinkytoe]

I would be livid, too, and I would probably ask my neighbor incessantly not to do that. I don't understand how people don't get it that what you spray all over your house and yard affects everything - not just the "bad" bugs. And a sycamore tree? That's just nuts. This love for pesticides does seem to be a generational thing though.

[goldensmom]

Our farmer neighbors use a crop duster airplane to spray their fields and the county sprays for mosquitoes by airplane with no notice beforehand. I don’t know what chemicals they are using and assume that it is not harmful to people or animals but I make sure my dogs are inside when I hear and see a low flying small yellow airplane spraying something. I have no recourse in the matter.

[iris lily]

Well you know what I will recommend: kill the damn thing. Trees are The Enemy. Figure out a way to stealthly do it in. Hey, I will help you, just call me when you are ready.

[pcooley]

I think the sycamore tree thing goes back to a time when a big portion of the tree seemed to be dying. Whatever it was spread to our sycamore trees as well. Her tree company said it was insects and recommended spraying -- yearly evidently. I called a different tree service who said it was a fungus and said there wasn't anything to do, and the tree would have to fight it out on its own, (which is my response to my own health problems). I cut the dying branch off our tree, and the tree has bounced back. Generally, it still looks much better than my neighbor's tree, but she won't listen. She's lived here forty years after all. We've only been her neighbor for fourteen. She likes to have her yard neat and well-sprayed. I've been going for the wild permaculture forest look. We manage to tolerate each other. But I have to say most of our yard is edible, and we tend to just pick things and eat them without thinking to wash them. The spraying makes me very nervous.

[redfox]

Well you know what I will recommend: kill the damn thing. Trees are The Enemy. Figure out a way to stealthly do it in. Hey, I will help you, just call me when you are ready.

LOL! I want a pic of you stealthing around ninja-like assasinating a sycamore...

[Square Peg]

My old neighbor would burn plastic :( We couldn't leave the house those days. Between that and the migraine-inducing manure spreading at the farm in town, it wass a tough place to live.

[bae]

Well you know what I will recommend: kill the damn thing. Trees are The Enemy. Figure out a way to stealthly do it in. Hey, I will help you, just call me when you are ready.

I also live to serve. Call 1-800-TREEBUSTERS

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-AwwtwAvPkOc/S_rpEhfFtiI/AAAAAAAAD8U/juDHeU5Fb8g/s640/gse_multipart6793438116023170181.tmp.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-zSZ5mH4Kyi0/T3d1gxXuO3I/AAAAAAAAE1M/ACg6GQqnA-o/s640/IMG_0591.JPG

[Polliwog]

Well you know what I will recommend: kill the damn thing. Trees are The Enemy. Figure out a way to stealthly do it in. Hey, I will help you, just call me when you are ready.

I hope you don't mean ALL trees. I love all the trees surrounding my house and the birds do too.

[iris lily]

I hope you don't mean ALL trees. I love all the trees surrounding my house and the birds do too.

Yep most of them in my world, anyway. It's an unpopular stance, I'll grant you that. But just try to plant lilies 'n iris in the near vicinity of those sun hogging, nutrient sucking, water consuming things and see how your lilies 'n iris do.

[bae]

Trees grow like weeds here, and it is a constant battle to keep them far enough away from the house to provide a defensive space against wildfire, and to keep them from toppling over in our 100mph wind storms and crushing the house or cars:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-JauSDm1iSSs/S_1rDNNsZBI/AAAAAAAAD8U/yOKGDGVrtKA/s640/gse_multipart3191523857834411211.tmp.jpg

The native peoples used to just burn everything to the ground here every 7-10 years, they may have been onto something.