trees

“System reliability and safety are extremely important,” says Scott Roach, director of engineering services at LCEC. “With every new project, every work plan, it’s always with that in mind.”

Foliage foibles

One of the most significant factors affecting that reliability is the presence of trees. Of course, properly placed trees not only are beautiful to look at, but they also provide tangible benefits: increasing property values, reducing the cost to heat and cool a home, providing privacy, and even cutting stormwater runoff.

The ALB is a wood-boring bug that attacks a dozen types of hardwood trees in North America, including maples, elms, buckeyes, birches, and willows. Infested trees do not recover. They then weaken and become safety hazards, especially during storms, and eventually die.

Large apex predators once lived here, too: mountain lions and wolf packs preying upon myriad white-tailed deer and elk. Ohio even had buffalo herds (I’ll write more about those later this year).

The nasally call of summer insects has begun to fade away, and the shiny wax coating of tree leaves is beginning to lose its luster. As summer turns toward fall, buckeye seeds come to rest on the forest floor, where they will sink into the soil and take root, as they’ve done since the Pleistocene winter of 10,000 years ago.

Coded in that inedible promise of a would-be tree lies all the information the seed needs in order to make a living in Ohio’s rich and varied soils — just add water and light.

Happy kids, an appealing, eco-friendly product — what’s not to like about a cut-your-own Christmas tree operation? It’s a win-win situation, says Brian Bartels, who with his wife, Kara, and parents, Steve and Judy Bartels, operates Bartels Farm in Hamilton. The operation features fresh-cut Christmas trees, a live Nativity scene, tractor rides, and a Christmas shop.