Tree Care #4, Side Pruning Traditional Cache
hortcacher: Archiving due to construction. I hope to put another one out when construction is complete.
Tree Care #4, Side Pruning
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
You are looking for a small container. There is a little room for small trade items. This cache was placed to show utility side pruning of trees and to teach my arboriculture (tree care) students and consumers the importance of choosing the right tree for the right place.
This is the 4th in a series of caches that I am placing for my arboriculture (tree care) students (and others who are interested) to see common tree care practices and understand their positives and negatives. If you look north or south on Washington Street from this site, you will see trees along the west side of the street in which the whole side has been removed to eliminate the potential for limbs to touch the power lines. As consumers, we often complain about utility companies "butchering" our trees, but their number 1 priority is to keep the electricity on. We would probably complain even more if our electricity was not dependable. Limbs falling on power lines, or whole trees falling on power lines are a big source of electrical outages.
Utility companies have several methods of pruning trees to eliminate interference of limbs with the lines. This is one of those methods. You can see that the whole side of the tree above the power lines is removed.
Now, we, as consumers, actually have to accept some responsibility for these trees being pruned the way they are. The wrong trees were selected for these sites, or the trees were not planted far enough away from the lines. How can we fix this problem? Look up when we plant and be aware of those lines. If we are planting trees that at maturity will interfere with the lines, we need to move them back away from the lines (not directly underneath) to prevent interference. We can also choose trees that have a small mature size (sometimes called "utilitrees") that will never interfere with the lines.
This cache has been placed with the permission of OSU President and First Cowgirl, Burns and Ann Hargis, and the OSU Grounds Department.
Congratulations to gururyan for FTF!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vg vf envavat ba gurfr cynagf, ohg abg nyy bs gur jngre snyyf sebz gur fxl!