Trees & Storms

The first willow root I ever pulled from a sewer lateral came from a section on River Road in Avonside, autumn of 2014. The house had been red-zoned and the wastewater had backed up into the shower one last time. We opened the 100 mm earthenware pipe at the boundary and drew out a root

The call came at 6.40 on a Sunday morning in late September: a Cashmere homeowner on Hackthorne Road with a gum tree across the driveway and a radiata pine leaning on the neighbour’s carport. Overnight a southerly had dropped about 15 centimetres of wet, heavy snow on the Port Hills, the kind that sticks to

My son rents a 1960s weatherboard place on a hillside in Karori, the kind of Wellington section where the back garden is a 35-degree bank and the front gate is 40 steps below the front door. Along the top of the bank stand five trees, three macrocarpa and two pōhutukawa, all leaning downhill towards the

The southerly that crossed Christchurch in July 2024 was forecast three days out: gusts to 90 km/h from the south-west, sleet on the Port Hills above 300 metres. I spent the afternoon before it walking a Cashmere section on Hackthorne Road where a 24-metre Eucalyptus globulus stood 11 metres from the back bedroom. Since the

On 10 October 2022 I had a climber booked for eight o’clock to strip deadwood out of a 22-metre Lombardy poplar behind a villa on Straven Road, Riccarton. The MetService forecast the evening before read north-west 45 km/h rising to 70 in the afternoon, with a strong wind watch for the plains. At seven I