Title: DIY Tree Cutting Can Cause Legal Headaches
Downloaded: 2026-04-10 14:50:50

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Auto Accident Attorneys podcast where we take care of you. As always, it's sponsored by the AutoAcconent Attorneys Group. I'm your host, attorney Ali on social media, attorney Ali. Today I am joined by someone that I recently met because of a case and speaking to her quickly became a huge fan. Christy Bryant with Speaking for the trees and you can find her on Tik Tok at speaking for trees. That's it. That simple. Christie, thank you so much.

I know that it was a about an hour drive to get to our office today. It's Atlanta. Everything's an hour drive. Well, I really appreciate you coming and I thank you. I'm so excited to actually be able to talk to you in in person uh after when we initially met, we were discussing some issues around a a tragic case that our firm is handling. Then I started following you on social media and I fell in love with everything that you do and I became fascinated. Uh before we started recording, I was telling you I I didn't realize I was a fan of trees until I saw banyan trees.

Yeah. So now I'm especially like the root system. Yeah. See, so if you wouldn't mind um to kick us off, just give us a little bit of background about you and and who it is that I have the pleasure of speaking to today. Yeah. So u my name is Christy Bryant. Um I am an arborist, but I came into Aborulture via landscaping. So I've been working in people's jars for about 25 years. So, um I've seen all the good and all the bad, all the mistakes and all the really good stuff that people have done. Um and then, you know, I just moved into trees and I never really even knew how much I love trees until all of a sudden um I'm in charge of their care.

And the first eight years of my life in a culture was actually working for removal companies and having to remove trees. And after about five years with with Gunnison Tree, it was an Atlanta founded company. I was like, you know, I just can't do this anymore. I don't want to kill them anymore. I let other people do that and I'm gonna save them. So, um, because of my relationship with Gunnison or my my job with Gunnison, it was an easy, we had a book of builders that we did tree removals for, so it was easy to just get involved with them and start writing their prescriptions because yes, I write prescriptions on trees.

Isn't that fun? So started getting involved with builders and writing prescriptions on trees and actually getting to do the nitty-gritty every day of getting to to save trees. I mean I actually go out and do my own treatments and um and you know do the fun stuff to do with trees. Um I do a lot of tree inventory so you know I get paid to walk around the woods and hug trees. Literally my hug is 18 inches. So I walk around the woods hugging trees. So it's a hard life I live um self-employed and I love to travel.

Um and trees are very what most people don't understand about trees are trees are very cultural and um those cultures are in in Switzerland they in Finland polarding trees is a practice that they use because their average temperature is 74 degrees and they want the sunshine on shining on their cafes whereas South Georgia we need all that tree canopy we can get because most of you know so trees are very cultural and I've learned so much about trees by traveling trying to travel the world learning about trees.

So, it's really cool and I and I try to bring back all that I learned back to Atlanta and open my mind and to think maybe there is a way besides the way we think about trees in Atlanta. Um, so it's been it's a fun adventure. That's amazing. I I'm fascinated by everything that you've been posting. Uh, one of the videos I saw just this morning, uh, on my way into the office, it was you work with a lot of developers, it looks like, because, um, one thing I want to know is if it is the minority of developers that do this or if it's a requirement, but making sure that there's a tree plan.

Yes. Is that now like a a city requirement? So yeah, every like everybody but Cobb County, which is the county of my birth and the county in which I reside and it makes me mad, has tree protection or where we are today, has tree protection ordinances. And what that is saying is that we as a municipality have decided that trees are important. In fact, if you read the first couple lines of every tree ordinance, it says because trees sequester carbon, make for prettier neighborhoods. It's it's that's the reason people the municipality decides to protect trees.

So, inside of a tree protection ordinance, that could be anywhere from protecting you from removing trees in your own yard that you have to prove it's bad before you remove it. Um, or it could be if you're going to build a new house or add a pool, then you have to have an arborist involved to verify what's on site, to verify what's going to be impacted. In a lot of ways, this protects your neighbors or protects you as a neighbor from the construction next door. Um because they can't just do prote, you know, they they have to protect your tree while they're doing construction on it.

And for us out here in the land of no protections, like my neighbor came in. I woke up one morning and there's, you know, big machine sounds and I go running outside and he's cut, I don't know, three, no, probably 30 inches away from the trunk of a huge popler tree that is 5 foot away from my bedroom. And there's roots five, six inches tall being dug up. And I'm like, what the freak are you doing? You can't do that. You're you're going to kill us. And that wouldn't have happened. Technically, it wouldn't have happened if we were in an area where somebody bothered to care about our trees and protecting and protecting us.

So, on the the clip that I saw, it looked like it was new development and you had brought someone out. The first thing that you showed, you had a a high-tech piece of equipment. It was an orange bucket. Yeah. And then you had brought someone out and I couldn't I couldn't follow along from from what I understood. uh you were making it so that the tree would stop growing. Yeah. So tell me about that. Okay. So it's really cool. So trees have energy buckets. Okay. So trees have a certain amount of energy that they can expend and it has different places where it goes defending.

It has to defend against decay. It has to defend its leaves against fungus. It has to do defend defend defend defend defend. Has to stand up straight. It has to grow. Has to reproduce. It has all these things, but it's basically four energy buckets that it has. And one of those energy buckets is top is growth. Okay? So, in the in the fall, trees are putting their energy into root growth. And in the summer, spring, summer, it's spring, it's flowering, summer, it's growing and branch elongation. So, if I can shut down one of those energy buckets by 70%, then I have increased the energy that the tree has by 33 35% in the other bucket areas.

Right? So if we know that we are going to impact the critical root zone, which what that means is we are going to remove whatever percentage of those roots. So in the city of Atlanta, if you're impacting a tree more than 20%. You have to have an arburist involved. So 20 is about the cut off, right? So if we're going to impact a tree by more than 20%, we're harming it. What happens is we apply the chemical plant growth regulator that shuts down the trees need to grow at the top. So, it can then redistribute the energy and use all of that saved energy to replace the feeder roots that we just cut off or compacted or removed in some way from the from the tree.

That's fascinating. I know it's Thank you, scientist. Thank you, tree scientist. Unbelievable. I've got two questions. One, how do you measure percentage? How do you know you're impacting 20% of the roots? Great. Good question. Critical root zone is a mathematical formula based on that tree ordinance's math. Okay? So each tree ordinance, it's based on the diameter of the tree. When we talk about trees, we don't talk about trees in height. We talk about trees in DBH or diameter at breast height. So four and a half feet from the ground because everybody's breasts are different.

It's four and a half feet from the ground from grade is where we measure a tree. So, if it's a 20-inch diameter tree and that ordinance says it's one foot per inch, then that radius circle is 20 feet that has to be protected. So, I see technically in nature, think about it just being drip line to drip line and that would be the critical root zone. So, that if you're working out in your front yard this weekend and you want to lay some sod and you want to think, "Oh, Christie, where am I?" Okay, take that whole canopy, drip line to drip line, make that your 100% and then, you know, figure out what you're removing.

When you're saying drip line, that is the furthest point out that the roots are going in the ground. Yes. It's the furthest uh branches where the leaves are. Oh, I see. So, you you measure by looking up actually. No, we measure the diameter. Okay. technically. And then when we're doing a site plan, a technical builder site plan, it's going to be whatever that ordinance is, it's going to be a circle on a site plan. So there'll be a dot where the tree trunk is and then it'll be a circle around it. And that circle is a critical root zone.

So then the site planner is like, "Okay, my house is going to go here." So it's going to go 30% into that critical root zone. So, so now we have an arborist involved because my house foundation's going under the under that tree. I never, you know, when when the leaves fall in the fall and then winter is there, everything looks dead. I never had given consideration to the fact that the tree is still alive and and using its energy. It's just using its energy underground to have a stronger root system.

I thought it was just dormant. I thought it was like a bear in hibernation. Most of them are dormant in winter, but in fall, um, which is fall is the best time to plant trees, the best time to fertilize trees. It is not the best time to prune mature trees in your cities. So, um, fall, I think fall is good for underground for your trees. I see. I want you to do your above ground stuff in the winter if you can, in the winter or spring. So, spring is okay. Spring is okay as long as is the cut off as long as it hasn't started new growth up top.

So there's two different schools of thought. Okay. And um so this one school of thought is the tree is dormant and so is everything else that could be harmful to the tree. So all of our fungal spores are dormant. All of our mean little bugs that could attack tree are dormant. So nothing can attack the tree. But the tree also isn't awake to defend itself. So there's the one school of thought and up until about the past six months that was my school of thought and then you know you learn and you read and I read an article and I was like because I had always thought in the back of my mind but it's not awake.

It can't seal wounds like it you know um and then I read this article and it was talking about how it's not really great to prune in the winter because the tree can't seal wounds. So trees have this really cool process. is a four-step process when they're wounded or when they're damaged. Okay? And part of that process is building up chemicals. So, if you've ever Everybody's going to go out this weekend and look at their firewood. So, if you're ever looking at firewood, okay, and you see those cool um lines, black lines of delineation inside of the wood and you notice like one side is really pung and the other side is really strong.

That is the tree fung that's the tree chemicals fighting the funguses from the environment. And there's this constant trees are constantly fighting, constantly defending themselves, constantly trying to stay upright and healthy. Their own tree antibodies in a sense. Absolutely. That's amazing. Yeah, they're pretty cool. So, when did we have the technology to to have these chemicals or these medicines, I don't know what to call them to be able to So, most of tree care started like in the 80s. Um and the plant growth regulator that we use is um was actually developed by the utility industry.

Actually no no okay that was actually developed to be a systemic fungicide. Okay. So leaf funguses are very funguses period are hard to deal with. You ever had mold in your house? Right? Funguses are just hell. So imagine taking it outside and trying to deal with a fungus outside where you can't control anything. So, the best way that we can deal with any kind of plant issues is systemically to get the chemicals straight to the place where we need it. Systemic insecticides, think about it. We're getting it straight to where the insect bites it and then the insects getting it.

There's not a lot of environmental implications because we're not just spraying something around. So, systemics is really the way to go. But we they did there wasn't a good systemic fungicide. So, the industry developed this thing. Well, it wasn't very effective as a systemic fungicide. In fact, there's there's only one that's proven any really good things and it's not yet out on the market. Come on FDA, get off your butts. We need this approved. But they noticed that it actually held back the growth of the plants.

And so then the utility industry is like, "Hey, we need you." And so the utility industry picked it up. Their scientists took off with it. And now we have um the brand name is Cambat or Shorts Stop. um but the chemical that shuts down the growth and the trees and it actually really saves trees because it does all kinds of other groovy side effects like it makes the leaf cuticle stronger so the actual leaf is thicker so that that plant accidentally um is more resistant to funguses on the leaf because the cuticle's f and then another byproduct is drought tolerance because we've taken away this desire to grow we've taken away the water use of the tree so they're more drought tolerant urban areas it reduces ambial growth.

So you can keep those trees in those tight areas longer because you're reducing the growth. So all kinds of cool different implications came from this one little experiment. That's unbelievable. It's really cool. I need an education on some of the vocabulary. What's what is the cuticle? Cuticle would be um the uh it's a it's a port a part of the leaf. Okay. It's it's a portion of the leaf. A part of the leaf. Uh like the the skin part of it. Think about like the cuticle of the skin. Yeah. Like it's going to be the Yeah.

the kind of the outer area. Oh, on the Okay. So, so that the the green is going to be thicker so that funguses can't penetrate the green to get in there and Got it. And then the we were talking about trees uh in the city, the cambria. So, cambial growth is diameter growth of the trunk and the branches and the underground structure roots. You can control that with this. Yep. Short stop. Short stop or canvas that. Yeah. Um I always mispronounce it so I don't want to do it on a podcast but the chemical name is like polybuterride.

So that's unbelievable. Yeah. My default uh mode I spent a lot of time in California. So I'm thinking let things be natural. Let things be holistic. This is actually something that is helpful. Yes. For tree work. We're injecting them. This is my my brain going sideways on it. If we didn't intervene, would trees develop uh sort of like the survival of the fittest? Would would trees end up changing? Are we somehow keeping trees in existence? No. Um what we're doing is we're making it where we can live with trees.

All right. So all of the bad things bad things that trees do to people would that does that matter if it's in the middle of the woods? If a tree falls in the middle of the woods, does it matter? Does it harm anything? I guess not. No. Okay. So we have to have arborists because we have to live in trees. We have to live with trees. We have to we have moved oursel into their forest. Okay. And um we have to live with trees because of that, you know. And so aborulture is based on making sure that people can live with trees.

So trees would be being trees. I mean we would have Dutch elm disease that would wipe through and wipe out trees. But if you think about almost everything that destroys trees, it's because man became involved. Emerald ashbor is an invasive spe is an invasive insect that we have here that is over in the US is killing it that it's killing everybody. We have no natural predators. It's killing ash trees everywhere. The Midwest almost has no ash trees left. um that wouldn't be here if it wasn't brought off brought over on a pallet.

So it's so much of what we have to deal with in trees because we did it right. We messed them up. So then we are having to treat for emerald ashbor because we brought emerald ashbor over. So we the this solution that my feeble mind not knowing anything about trees where I was thinking well we're intervening maybe where we shouldn't we're actually intervening because we've created the problem and a lot of cases. Yeah. I see. Yeah. Would it matter if that big white oak behind your house fell if your house wasn't there?

No. Maybe to the tree under it, right? Maybe to a couple squirrels, but that's it. It's not going to kill you. It's not going to harm your family. It's not going to create a real risk. Right. This is so much fun for me to figure out. Oh, I love it. So, like I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite trees is the banyan tree. And the reason I'm so infatuated by it is because of the the way that the the vines come off of the branches and then go back into the ground. aerial roots. They're aerial roots. So, I don't call them vines.

Nope. They're aerial roots. They're roots of the planet. And they go back into the ground and then they they stick together. I don't know the victory. Yeah. I don't know that much about the banyan tree. Um but I do know that it's an aerial root tree and that that's why it just it just keeps growing and bigger so much bigger because they're like the truck is like on those roots, right? And it looks to me like the more aerial roots that it has that goes back into the soil, it gets a a more stable and a stronger foundation.

The roots just make it stronger and stronger. And I'm looking at the badge on your shirt with the Georgia arburous with all of the roots. Yeah. And it makes me wonder at one point in time I remember hearing that trees communicate or like in the ground there's a lot of communication network going on. Can you tell me about that? So, the first off the one thing I'm going to say is the Georgia Arbur Association. This is a very wellthoughtout logo. We actually have a shirt that's a lot better, but we actually have a on the shirt, we actually have a ruler to the side that shows 6 in.

And if you look closely, these roots are not going down, they are going out. Because the one of the major misunderstandings about tree roots, especially in clay soils, but as far as I understand at all these international conferences I go to, that it's most of the world has tree roots that only go down in the top six to eight inches of soil. So, it was very important for us as a Georgia Arborous Association, if we're going to show roots, we're going to show them correctly. So, remember that guys that you don't have deep roots.

We have very shallow root systems and they go further out. So when we're talking about trees and digging and construction like that's people don't understand that my builders will call me up say they gave me a word a violation and I didn't we weren't anywhere near that tree and I'll roll up and I'm like there's tracks up to three feet from the trunk and I'm like in the most important part of the tree where you know Pete and repeat it's like you don't know what you're talking about that's why you have meat.

How how do they communicate? So, okay, so this is really fun. So, the feeder roots of the tree, um, again, structure roots are the branch-like parts of the tree that grow underground and hold up the tree. Okay? The feeder roots are responsible for energy absorption, bringing in water and nutrients, doing everything else. And that is the communication center of the tree. But they are helped to communicate by the underground network called microisa. Now microisa are beneficial fungi bacteria that um that form a symbiotic relationship with the feeder roots because that's where the sugar is.

Okay? So they attach to the feeder roots of the tree for the sugar and the tree normally they don't like that like that's what mistletoe does is it's after the sugar and the crown of the tree and it's bad. But this time the tree doesn't mind it because those little microisas go out and they form their own little network. And so they're allowing the tree communication between the feeder roots to happen very much better and faster through that microisal network. So it's the one time fungus is really good.

Another cool thing, if you've ever eaten a chantterell mushroom, you are eating the flowering part of the very important microisa. Oh wow. Wow. Very fun. That's incredible. I did not know that. I know. It's very cool. A microyzen. Microisa. Yeah, microiz. It's, you know, it's all the plural. Yeah, I think I'm from Georgia. What the heck do I know? They're helping to have the feeder roots understand what's going on like they're basically extending the telephone network that so like a where I would put in additional Wi-Fi in the house like a little booster signal.

what it's doing. But at the same time, not only are they helping the trees communicate, but they help extend the feeder root so that they can take in more water and nutrients. There are some species of plants that cannot survive without their own special microisa. And there's gazillions of kinds of endo and exto microisa. It's a whole science in and of itself. Um, but it's very important to trees and like um if you've ever gone walking in the North Georgia woods, you'll notice um on the ground you'll come upon it's called creeping ground cedar and they're these little like miniature looking trees.

They're about that tall and they just it looks like a little miniature forest growing on the forest floor. That's called creeping ground cedar. Everybody in the world has wanted to duplicate this because what would be cooler to bring into our landscapes than a pretty little full shade loving ground covers? Like the nursery industry is like we need this and everybody in the world has tried to replicate it but you can't because it lives with this specific microisa and so when you go and dig it up all you're doing is killing that.

You're not going to replicate it. You're not going to get those creeping ground seeders to grow outside of an environment where the micro is present first. is microisa. Could can you see it? You can see it. If you dig off if you dig in the forest, the feeder roots of a tree are going to be just a little woody. And the microbisor are going to be white and they're not going to be woody at all. They're going to be like they're kind of they fall apart kind of when you touch them. But that's microisa. They will literally physically attach to the feeder root and extend the feeder root, but it's a completely separate organism.

Yeah. Completely separately. Yeah. That's fascinating. I know. That's pretty cool. We live in a really cool world. Is it true that if there's a tree that is sick or not getting enough nutrients that other trees nearby will shut down their own supplies so that that sick tree gets more? Of course, I don't know the science behind this, but if you really want to read about this um the hidden life of trees, um by a German forester um and then there's another book by a lady, a Canadian forester, and she was the one responsible for the like they were actually able to see how fast trees respond.

So yes, there is scientific evidence that proves that tree they don't shut down their because they have to get their energy. They share. So they don't shut down what they're doing. They just share what they have. They're sharing their resources. I see. I I wish I had some mushrooms right now to I know. I know. The the good kind. Well, the other good kind. I love this conversation. Yeah. So, it is springtime now. This was an awesome education. Thank you. Uh, keeping in line with the theme of the podcast about taking care of the community and and providing information that's helpful.

the trees are growing back. So technically it's still early enough where people are able to prune. Yeah. Or even if they needed to remove trees going shifting the conversation into to removal. I know you don't love that, right? But it's necessary. But if uh maybe one, let's start with removal alto together. Are there things that cuz in Atlanta there's obviously the city and the forest also huge trees, a lot of rainfall. We've got trees falling onto homes all the time. Is there any recommendation that you have to identify trees either that are at risk that should be removed or is there anything to do preventatively to to maybe stop it from happening?

Absolutely. If you live in a tree canopy, you need to have a relationship with a tree arborist. You just do. Um there's a whole different schools of thoughts on if if a arborist is associated with the tree company, you can't trust what they say because they have a you know they have a bone in the fight blah blah blah blah blah. I used to believe that wasn't true when I was a sales arborist because like I would never do it and I saw it from a side of if I remove this tree now like they're not going to trust me and I can't come back and do anything to it later.

Like to me it was very shortsighted. Um, but I know a lot of people believe that. And since I've been a consulting arborist, I'm sad to say I've seen a lot of not great stuff being done by people that are certified arborists. The one thing I want to say about using an ISA, International Society of Aborulture, certified arborist, is that we have an ethical code of ethics that we sign. And every time we have to redo our thing, we have to resign that code of ethics. And so if you are a certified arborist and you do some scummy stuff, you can lose your certification um and they have a whole ethics board that looks at all these things and um it's so you know using a certified arborist should make you feel safer.

Um but like all industries we have our bad people. Um but you know starting out with looking for a certified arborist or company that has a certified arborist. One of the things that I I tell talk to my homeowners about when I'm in a residential consultation and we're we're we have to do tree work. The next thing I go into is how to choose a tree company. So, how I met you again was because of a very bad bad situation um because the people didn't bother to do their homework. The homeowner said, "I don't even know his name.

I just I just pick up the phone and not call him because the whole neighborhood uses him." which means a whole neighborhood bo never bothered to check to see if this guy had the minimum that is required by OSHA rules to do tree work. Okay. And or inside of the ANZY standard. So every industry has the American industry safety standards. The ANZY standards. If your safety glasses have to be ANZY certified for your you know like this is our safety certification thing. Okay. So inside of tree work we have the ANTC133 which is safety and that covers what is the what is the standards for safety inside of the industry.

So if you're working in a place that has a tree ordinance they better be doing work according to both the ANZY safety standards and the Andy standards for how to do tree work. Okay. So that's the Z133 and the 300. The 3000 300 the ANZY standards 3000. So those are the two that we need to care about in tree work. Okay. It's impressive that you remember these. Oh, well I know. And I'm like thinking to myself, I'm like, am I saying them backwards? But I'm pretty sure safety is the Z133. So in this Z133 safety thing, it says things like we need to have two climbers on site in case one needs to rescue another one out of a tree.

We need to have CPR and first aid certified people so that they can respond to an emergency. We need to do a safety walkthrough before we start our job. We need to have a work plan. Uh we need to have cones behind a chipper. We don't need to leave a chipper running when we're not there so a little kid doesn't walk in and jump in. I mean, these rules, hearing protection, eye protection, chainsaw chaps, all of these are covered. So, I always start by telling my clients just when you call up to request an estimate, start with how often do y'all train your employees.

If the company cares about the culture of their company, the person answering the phone is going to be so proud of their training program that they're going to fall over themselves telling you about it, right? Okay. So, that's just a really fun, easy way to know if you have a good tree company right off the bat. And and people should care. The listeners should care. Uh it's not about the cost. If you you might think that you're paying a premium, but in our situation, how we met, what happened was that that tree removal company was a fly by night business essentially.

Uh they weren't bonded, no insurance. So, guess who that liability falls on? It falls on to the homeowner. So, maybe you saved a couple hundred bucks, but when tragedy strikes, you're ultimately going to be liable. So, and not to mention what that poor homeowner had to deal with. what you know people don't even think about what you have to see when you have something like that happen right in addition to all the trauma you know like going back to the one that happened in Aworth you know the guy like basically fried himself in a tree he had his steel cord lanyard on that's covered you don't work around electricity with a steel cord lanyard you know it's just senseless it's all of this is just senseless we've done a lot of content around auto insurance and uh one of the most common things we hear from people that call our office.

They're like, "Well, I have full coverage." So, I'm not worried cuz I know I have full coverage. Full coverage doesn't really mean anything. So, it's we're trying to produce this content so that people think about all of the different types of policies that you can have and what it covers. And this conversation is sort of right in line with that being like you don't just go with who your neighbor chose without doing your research and making sure that it's the equivalent of them saying well it's full coverage because my neighbor used it right.

Yeah. And it's risky. It's risky to do it. How about uh a couple pruning tips? Can I can I cause damage to uh I have a Japanese maple that's not very big, but uh it grows tall and we've got a uh security camera at the corner of my garage that I don't want to block that view. Would you be able to give me tips on when I should be pruning or if I should be pruning in Japanese maple and what I should be looking for, how to handle that kind of thing? Yeah, this is one of the favorite things I say to people is we don't prune because of a date rolls around on a calendar.

We prune because the plant needs us to prune it. Okay. Okay. So, in your case, your desire to prune is security clearance. This happens in parking lots all the time, right? Um, we need our security. We need our security cameras. So, um, pruning tips, always prune to a point. Okay. Trees are driven by hormones and they have hormones in the sides of the branches that defend against decay. Decay is the enemy of trees. And then they have hormones down at the tip. So the branches that make them grow. So when we just randomly just cut in the middle of a branch, we have disrupted all of the hormones.

The tree doesn't know how to grow properly. It doesn't can't defend the wing properly and we just messed it up. Think crate murder. Okay. If I were to simply go and go, okay, well this branch is going this way away from the camera and this branch is going straight up to the camera and here is the the place where they meet. Which branch does it make sense to remove? Well, the one that's growing into the camera, but you go back and you cut it at the point in which it leaves the trunk or another branch. We don't ever just want to cut randomly.

It's called stub cutting, and it's just bad. It's bad practice. We also don't want to cut too far into the flesh of the tree. That's called flesh cutting. Um, I want to shout out to the extension agent. Um, every state in the United States has a land grant university and inside of that land grant university is the extension department. Here it's the University of Georgia Extension Department and we have these amazing extension agents in every county and they have publications sitting in an office and you can Google University of Georgia publications.

You can learn about native trees, what are our major invasives, how do we prune, how do trees grow, what's wrong with my blueberry pond. They have all of this for farmers. you want, you're a pecan farmer, they have all these resources for you and it's all free. Um, and your extension agent is just sitting right there at their desk this morning waiting on somebody to call and ask them a question about a plant. They do soil test for $8, $10 a thing. Get involved with your extension agent. They're here to help us with these things.

90% of them are certified arborist. Um, they're here to support us in our in our front yards and our backyard uh landscapes. That's amazing. And it's there's an agent for every county. Every county. Unbelievable. And even Cobb County. Even Cobb County. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And we have our Georgia Forestry Commission. You know, they can help you with big tree issues. You know, there are a lot of state, you know, agencies that are here to help us. Georgia Forestry does a lot of firewood management, fire management, and they also deal with like all of the pine beetle outbreaks.

So, you know, they're helicoptering and they're always watching out for our forest. So, big shout out and thank you so much for the Georgia Forestry Commission. Amazing. I saw when we were talking about pruning, I saw some content where you were giving tips about how to prune down to the do you call the joint the branch collar? The branch collar. Uh so you do I just outside of it. You got to get just outside of it cuz if you cut behind it, you cut through the hormones that create the chemicals that create the ceiling over of the wound.

And do I remember correctly where uh you had cut you made a cut just to get rid of the branch and then when there was just a little bit left then you made the cut that was closest to the collar. It's called the three cut method. Three cut method. And there's again at the extension department there's a guide called the homeowner guide to pruning. And I actually used to teach I used to use it to teach my landscapers how to prune. So it's a really good publication. It goes all the way from when to prune what like versus spring versus winter blooming versus summer blooming plants.

Um because like if you go out right now and you prune your aelas, you just cut off all your blooms for this year. So it's important when we prune um they talk about what pruners to use, when to use the bigger ones, you want to use the smaller ones. Um it's just a great great guide. Um, and I mean it's so good that that's what I used to teach with. That's amazing having that the information that that guide exists. I think that was worth the price of admission alone. Right. That's the biggest thing I've learned today.

No, it's it's a really cool document. Christie, you've been an amazing guest and I've loved the conversation. Is there anything that you feel like we didn't discuss that you would feel remiss by not sharing with our listeners? So I want to make everybody understand that there is not lenture and tree care in most states. There are only nine states that have lenture and tree care. So when you're looking at these tree companies and they say they're licensed. [Music] How is that? But I want to do a big shout out to uh Tearson Boute, Rusty Lee, Kevin Caldwell, Art Morris, myself, um Mandy Hall with Top Tier Trees.

These people are serving this industry. Um, go to GFasti Georgians for a safer tree industry. If you have an extra $10, please give it to them. We as an industry are fighting to have lenture inside of our own industry, which nobody does. Nobody would do that. We are doing this because people are dying and homeowners are getting bad work done and trees are being lost because of bad things happening. And if we can get just the minimum of license charge, it just says that these companies have to be insured or they have to carry this or whatever.

Again, Georgians for a safer tree industry, JFast, they've got a website. Um, if you need if you want to get involved, if you have trees, you love trees, whatever, and support the companies that support the effort. It is so unheard of in this day and age to see private business reaching out to the state to say, "Hey, you need to come in and regulate us." Yeah. Well, not every industry is the deadliest industry year after year after year. I don't know of another person. My sister's an ER nurse and she's the only other person I know that probably has to get the phone calls that I get, you know?

I mean, it's like, you know, this person died, this person died, this person cut themselves out of a tree, this person did this, this per, you know, I um Oh, another fun thing. We have all the local chapters have a tree climbing championship. And if you haven't had the opportunity to see tree climbing happen, it's a wonderful fun thing to do. And your support uh for us matters a lot. I am the chairperson of the Georgia Arbur Association Tree Climbing Championship um and have been for eight years. No, I don't climb.

But I am passionate about climbers because they are the ones that take care of our trees. They are the ones that make all of us money in the industry. They're the ones that risk it all to keep us safe. We have every year we have a tree climbing championship and we have 45 men and women that compete in timed events um that are just incredibly fun to watch. Like the most fun one is aerial rescue. So, they are on the ground and there is a 180 pound dummy in a tree and they're giving us rescue scenario. A buddy up there was trying to rescue a cat and he reached too far and he fell and he's trapped on the branch and and he's not conscious.

I haven't gotten him to talk to me and they pretend to be the rescuer walking up and then so they have to walk through the entire scenario. They have to talk they have to ask somebody to call 911. They have to talk to 911 when they get there while they're getting themselves in the tree to attach themselves to the real life-sized dummy that they have to get on the ground because we do have to do these rescues. These are the rescues that saves lives. Tree industry is a production industry. We are still all here to make money, but we have to be safe.

So, the tree the climbing competitions are all timed events that get it done fast, but they're all safety. If you drop your sungl If you drop your safety glasses, you're disqualified. Like it's all about safety. So, it's a lot of fun. Um, if you can see one advertised, get out and go cuz they're they're a blast. We will absolutely will attend, we'll sponsor, do whatever we can. We'll get the word out. Again, you are so passionate about your work and I think that you have surrounded yourself with a lot of really great people in the industry.

looking at the fact that you've taken this fun competition as the premise, but re in reality what's going on is it's it's its own informal certification program. It's a it's a reinforcing the safety standards and I I love you're taking care of people. I try to. So, it's it's you're right and trees and the trees take care of us. Yes, absolutely. Well, that's amazing, Christie. Thank you so much. We'll make sure to get all of your links out and you guys uh subscribe to the channel. Please subscribe to @speaking fort trees.

She's got great content on Tik Tok. And we will see you on the next episode. Take care everybody. Thank you.