7/21/2018
We were out front talking with our neighbor, who, amazingly enough, had an arborist over. The wind was quite high and Martin just happened to notice that there was some movement of the trunk. Yep, the trunk had split to within a couple of feet of the ground. The arborist said that almost always happens with maples if you let co-dominant trunks happen. This tree’s trunk had indeed been allowed to divide into two equally sized trunks and that’s where the split started.
Bill went up to put a ratchet strip around the two trunks to hold the tree together. Once the strap was in place and tightened up, it was obvious that it was taking a lot of load.
We immediately contacted the rental house’s management company and they got an arborist out as soon as possible, which wasn’t very quickly, since the high winds had damaged a lot of trees.
Here’s Bill putting the ratchet strap on. This is the only photo, since Martin had to drop the camera and re-rig the ratchet strap for Bill.