Squid, you're a chestnut guy too? No way!
In general I am a tree guy as landscaping architecture was my first career of choice, but my liver couldn't take the schooling. I got a little bored at it and decided I liked electrical engineering as it paid better and wasn't seasonal in NY. Then I could afford my own place and play on my land rather than working on other people's. Looking back it was a wise choice as I would have been a pretty lousy landscaper.
It is immensely frustrating being a tree guy. I have lost quite a few unusual specimens over the years due to trampling, eating, rubbing, drought, deep freezes, lightning, pests, etc. I had some pretty cool beech varieties until mice decided they were tasty, some interesting birch until drought, and now I am loosing my white pines and scotch pines to (I think) Sirex wood wasps. Inexplicable sudden deaths of otherwise healthy trees. I cut up and burned up a dead one this past weekend to eliminate larva. It was a big tree and my back is feeling the love...
