The tree-following link box has now closed for another month. To explore everyone’s updates, please go straight to the bottom of this post.
Why don’t you join us and follow a tree, too? You can start at any time and you don’t have to contribute every month if that’s too much of a commitment for you.
Autumn has started cool and wet here in Cardiff. As usual some trees have lost all their leaves already – such as the chestnuts and sycamores – and some appear unchanged.
On the night of September 12-13 Storm Aileen hit the UK. With 70mph winds it was nothing like as severe as the hurricanes that hit America and the Caribbean recently, but still warranted a name.
A Met Office satellite image of Storm Aileen before it arrived in the UK
I slept right through it, although my husband was awoken by a thud, he thought, around 2am, and got up to keep watch through the early hours until the storm passed.
In the next few days we saw stories about fallen trees in the city and I saw council workmen felling or making safe at least half a dozen trees. This tree was next to the Swalec cricket stadium on the riverside path but a few days later I heard workers felling it.
This was the damaged ash whose branches are seen in the image at the top of the post
Little did we realise we had a casualty in our own garden! Yesterday I went up the many steps to the wild part of our garden, mainly screened from the house by ash trees. I had noticed a broken branch. But when I neared the top of the steps I saw my way was blocked. Our biggest ash tree, probably 80 or 90 years old, had fallen and scattered limbs everywhere.
I wasn’t in a position to take pictures, but this was the tree in October 2007…
Our biggest ash 10 years ago – and now it has fallen
Maybe I should have followed this one while I had the chance!
Autumn is a good time to start following a tree, or to revisit one you have missed lately. If you are new to tree following, read all about it here.
And without further ado, here are this month’s links…
Alison at the Blackberry Garden – quince
Erika Groth in Sweden – rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)
Hollis (In the Company of Plants and Rocks) – changing trees)
Flighty’s Plot – Mike’s dogwood (Cornus) and Liz’s tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)
Frances at Island Threads, off the North West coast of Scotland – rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)
Pat – Squirrelbasket – 100 elm trees
Thank you to everyone – see you all again on November 7.
The Squirrelbasket 
Hi – always a shame when trees get damaged in storms, but it can also open opportunities even if I didn’t really want to have them.
Thanks again for hosting this meme.
Not sure what can be done as it is a wild area we don’t even climb up to in the garden, but hopefully the wildlife will think of something.
All the best 🙂
That’s a big tree … big hole? I guess more sunlight might be a benefit. A trip to see the fossil palm in its “native habitat” wasn’t meant to be … this year. I hope to get there next year, I’ve heard it’s super interesting. But I’m moving on … looking for another tree to follow. As always, thanks for hosting!
I expect the fossil palm will wait!
Pleased someone is already thinking of next year, it gives a sense that there really is a future!
The tree has left a big hole, but it will be clearer when the other trees in front of it have lost their leaves.
All the best 🙂
Hello I’ve just done a brief post about Liz’s Tulip poplar and my Dogwood, and linked it. xx
Thanks, I will be over to look soon 🙂
hello Pat, just linked my post, thanks for hosting, I will be back to read posts later, Frances
sorry to read about the lost of you lovely ash tree Pat, that wild part of your garden looks a wonderful place for wildlife, Frances
I finally took some pictures yesterday, after the tree surgeon had been. It will be an expensive job to remove the tree, with three days’ work needed!
I fear wildlife will suffer as there were many little hollows in the big old ash and woodpeckers were regulars there.
All the best 🙂
Pat, I don’t know the situation in your garden and you may have already considered this but found it can’t be, fallen trees and decaying wood are good for wildlife, so is there any possibility that some of it could be left to degrade gracefully, just a thought,
it sounds like a nightmare otherwise, wind can be so damaging, since living with it almost constantly now I have been trying to find something wind is good for and so far I can’t think of anything, it either just is or it is causing death and destruction, I hate watching my pines go brown and loose their leaves (needles) every year from the storms,
best wishes, Frances
I always worry about conifers, as I guess once their needles turn brown there is no saving them?
I have asked the tree man to leave some “habitat piles” as I want a memory of our ash, but he seems intent on carrying most of it away as the space is rather confined up there!
Thanks for your thoughts 🙂
Heartbreaking to lose a beautiful tree which is such a large part of your garden. We had a pair of 30 year old ash trees in our Porterville garden.
Thank you for your kind thoughts. The problem now is removal, as the tree surgeon says it will take three days and dragging everything down the steps and through the garden is going to damage the other shrubs. I’m beyond despair now, really!
All the best 🙂