Ok, first I must agree with kntryhuman. This form is no fun. I am 70 and the computer makes me sleepy so I kind of abbreviate, and hope that one can read between the lines. I meant to post a link to just my album with pictures of the Catalpa trees. I goofed, but not to worry. I will try and break this story down into baby talk, if I can stay awake long enough.

A strong wind storm (strong being 70+ miles per hour gusts ) toppled (blew down) our very old (at least 60 years old), hugh (bigger than a car and smaller than a ten story building) Catalpa tree. By the way, my sentence structure sucks too (hee-hee).

My DH (e.g. dear heart, dearest husband, dumb husband....whatever), took his chain saw (for sawing wood) and proceeded to cut (saw) the tree in chunks (small pieces) that he could push to the wood pile with his tractor (aka his John Deere barker lounger, where he tends to do his napping).

Now, I wanted to let the dead tree stay where it fell (remember, the wind toppled it over--on it's side) and have him dig into the top (actually the side of the tree is now facing the sky, so I will refer to it as the top of the tree hereafter) of the tree with his bucket (this long metal shovel attached to the front of his tractor) and fill the hole with dirt. The dirt would be free. Thus I would have a strawberry patch (patch being a treeful of dirt). Much easier to weed. So I put on a face, like those little tiny yellow icons all over the Internet that frown (look in the mirror). Oh, smileys! My dear heart loves me--so he put the chunks of trees he had removed--back. He bucketed (dug) a hole in the top of the toppled tree and filled it with dirt.

Anyway, to make a short story long:

By the end of the first summer a new tree started to grow out of the top of the downed tree (remember the strong wind had toppled the tree and it fell to the ground). The new tree looked like a large stick at first and I wanted to cut (hack) it off. I remember a little thing that looked like a stick growing next to our garage several years ago. You know "I told you so", right? Well I told him if he didn't cut the stick down it would grow into a hugh (bigger than a car and smaller than a ten story building) tree. Well, the 60 foot (720") tree is now pushing against said garage, moving it--inch by inch.
So, to get back to the stick--when I see this stick growing out of the top of the toppled tree, I TOLD him "the stick was going to grow big, turn into a tree, and get tangled in our telephone line. But he wanted that stick to stay and he put on a face (you do know what a face is now, right?) Look in the mirror. I love my DH, so the stick was left in place, and grew into a tree on top of the toppled tree (remember, owing to a very bad wind storm) and every year it blossoms and sprouts it's own seed pods. Because my DH truly loved the old Catalpa tree (been there as long as he can remember), and I love my DH, I have tried starting one from the pods shed (sown) by the tree growing from the top of the toppled tree...If I did the link thing correctly you can see the tree growing on top of the downed (toppled) tree and into the telephone line (second picture from the left).

Hooey, I am getting sleepy but the story continues...

Eventually I got two new Catalpa trees to sprout, but left them out over the winter and they did not survive (they died). In August of 2008 I again started two new Catalpa seeds and put them on the porch for the winter and all went well the summer of 2009. We decided not to rent the rear apartment for a bit, so I decided to put the two little trees in the apartment's furnace room for the winter. I went to check on them a couple of weeks ago to see how they were doing. I had them in separate containers (pots) on the floor and had watered them a couple of times over the winter. I noticed a pile of dirt around both containers and when I looked closely, I saw one of the trees had been pulled from its container. It was nowhere around, gone... Then, I saw little teeth marks all around most of the bark of the other tree. Oh no. I think I was told if something chews more than half the bark around a tree, it won't survive (it will die). We had two mouse traps around the base of each container and they had not been touched. so I can't imagine what was gnawing (chewing) and eating the tree(s). Pictures four and five from the left show the damage to my one surviving(?) Catalpa tree. And the sixth picture shows a bud it has sprouted and it is only March. If I mess up on the link--too bad, so sad.

I take having such an unintelligible post as a compliment. We have more than enough intelligible people running the country as it is. I just want to know, will my Catalpa tree survive?

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Here is a link that might be useful: Webshot Album

It should be ok and seal over itself this growing season. If not its possible they will resprout below the damage.. great job explaining to us with all of the parentheses. It worked out well.

Neat story!

I bet the fella will be ok also. Small trees gain girth much faster than large ones. Percentage wise anyways.

OMG too funny! Had a long day, poured a glass of wine, read your story and almost spewd my wine. I can see how this all unfolded. LOL!

Love your humor, lpalta, you just made a silk purse. I think you have a case of Catalpus rodentus. It is a very rare rodent whose preferred diet is seedling catalpa tre es. In your situation, you are lucky in that they apparently didn't totally girdle the seedling. You might try baiting your mouse traps with tender catalpa bark (from the tree shoving your garage off its foundation) if you want to catch them, however they are probably endangered so you will only want to use live-catch traps and release them in a safe, secure area with a plentiful supply of catalpa trees, such as an arboretum.

Seeing how the tree is breaking dormancy, I hope you've brought it out of the furnace room (where it was probably thinking you were about to cremate it and pushed leaves in self defense) and put it in a cool, sunny spot. Hopefully you can plant it out this year. To prevent future problems, you might also consider giving your furnace room a cat scan, then see if you can find a wild Catalpus felinus, also known as a mouser, who will stand guard out in the yard to prevent any future attacks on the planted trees.

Not to wrory aoubt yuor frsit psot. The sotry was a llitte cnofisung but the plrbeom cmae trhoguh luod and caelr.

Catalpa tree saga continues: (Brandon, I am with you on this one--what started out as a short story confused some people)

Hey, I had to re-learn how to insert image in post; pictures speak louder than words!

Now I have been over to kntryhuman's post and don't want to shock anyone with my next question?

Is there a correct way to remove the stick that grew into a tree on top of the tree that toppled? The photo below is of the back of the tree with the baby tree growing from the top (or side, whatever) of the mother tree.

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This photo is from the front. See where DH was readying it (sawing into chunks) for the wood pile?

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What I need to know is can this stick that grew into a tree and into the telephone wires (I TOLD him so) be weaned (separated) from it's mother?

This is what we have to work with:

One willing worker when not on his John Deere barker lounger.

DH (THEN): He has toppled many a tree; he had his son try his hand at downing (sawing down) one The tree landed on the house--won't embarrass them by posting those pictures.

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DH NOW: We call this his (DH) fact facer...

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Definition of a John Deere Barker lounger:

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Oh, that same wind storm toppled two of the three pine trees a little to the back of our house, thus I had my two telephone poles at last (DH wouldn't let me put nails in the, might kill them).

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The third tree DH toppled cuz it might go down on the house next wind storm. He said I didn't have to move the picnic table off the apartment patio, it wouldn't hit it. Well, by golly, he was right. He missed both houses and the table by inches--heart attack time for me.

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Criminey, I forogt the qeustion.

Couple of more pictures regarding my original question (in case I haven't bored Brandon enough...poop, forgot that question too!

Damaged Tree:

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And, lastly, the sprout. I did move it from the furnace room. Only because I was afraid the unknown killer tree critter would finis it off. Thanks for your tip beeone, I didn't know that. The tree against the garage is a poplar. They grow like weeds around here. But I will get some from the bush like sprouts that grow at the base of my downed Catalpa tree this spring. I have to give it a hair cut several times through the summer.

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AND. you all don't want to know my Mouser(s) story !!!

Brandon, I am not done yet.

Any winter sowers out there. Do you know what a sprout see?

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DONE

Good luck with your winter-sowing - hope you get sprouts this year. I have a large Catalpa speciosa at my rental house, it has made a couple seedlings in the yard (one of which is now a 4" caliper tree and needs to be removed yikes) so it shouldn't be too hard to germinate these trees. William Cullina's book on Native Trees, Vines, and Shrubs says that Catalpa seeds do not need cold stratification.

IMO your chewed up seedling doesn't look too good - some hardware cloth would protect future seedlings. I have also surrounded seedlings with wire fencing covered by bird netting to keep out rodents.

It looks like your Catalpa that was blown over has sent up a sprout from a piece of the huge old trunk, so it must have a root system somewhere. Is it growing something like this Black Walnut? This is growing in a nearby wetland and had toppled over at some point and then the side branches grew straight up becoming the new trunks -

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You have a very strange way of using the English language (maybe I'm just dumb). But I think I finally figured out what you meant by stick, did you mean that tree growing up out of that other dead one?? If so, no you can't remove it. If this post doesn't make sense then ignore it because I am quite confused.

Jeez, I didn't know what was growing out of the tree. If it looks like a stick I'll call it a stick. So I called it a stick at first. Should I have called it a sucker? Anyway, I think I said the stick grew into a tree. That's what probably cleared things up for you. At least I think it's a tree. It blossoms every year and gives off pods. So I will now call it a tree. I don't like web rage, so I have to have some fun with it. I have gotten a couple of opinions and, believe it or not, they were not the same as yours. But I do think yours is probably the correct response. Oh, it didn't take me a nano sec to know what kntryhuman was talking about--it may be you are easily confused. I will try another forum to and get an intelligent response as to if we can or cannot replant the tree, and why. I will be back with an update. Maybe I will google it in Spanis--talk about confusion. Anyway, I have enjoyed all the responses, thanks everyone.

This post is hilarious. lpalta, you have a good sense of humor...thanks for the laugh!!!

This is interesting. I posted at:

16 follow-ups, last one posted on Mon, Mar 8, 10 at 8:28

and my post has been removed????

Oh! Oh! I checked the box to email me copies of responses to this post. I got an email from you kntryhuman--I thought you had sent me a private email and when I replied to it, I deleted everything but my reply. Most of my other sites insist on this and send out no no's if you forget. As I grow older, so grows my brain. Am I in trouble???

lpalta,

Nothing that you did deleted the posts. I'm not sure what happened to them, but they were lost/deleted by Gardenweb, not by you or because of anything you did.

Now that the GardenWeb police have "sanitized" this thread, I have to admit that it's even more boring than the original.