Our property has a great many Arbutus trees on it. When we moved here the trees would be covered in flowers at this time of year and in the fall the red berries would bring flocks of robins who would eat the berries and then drunkenly fall on the ground or crash into our living room window.

But some sort of disease, virus, fungus or something or other hit the trees a couple of years ago and now a lot are just dead black limbs..We had a fir-tree blow off the back cliff on the lane three summers ago and when it fell it wiped out the better part of an arbutus tree leaving just kind of aragged ten foot stick coming out of the ground… E trimmed the cracked branches off and now it is covered in leaves and healthy again…. Arbutus trees can come back from a brutal pruning…

Our house is built on top of an Arbutus tree which grows out of the side of the cliff. The main branch is beneath window where I sit with my coffee. The squirrels drink and the birds bathe in the water caught in cankers on the limb. It is a very nice feature of the house.

When we bought the property four years ago the tree was healthy and beautiful and held the house in the palm of its hand. Now it is a jumble of black limbs. It looks dreadful from the ocean side and depressing from our window.  It is full of hummingbirds while they rest from the feeders. I don’t want to lose the hummingbirds.

We noticed a bit of new life coming from one limb at the bottom of the tree and were encouraged to think that maybe we can bring it back to life… Yesterday,  E put on a harness, attached it to the tree on the other side of the house. He then climbed over the house and out onto the cliff edge with his chainsaw  to prune the most offensive of the branches. We are hoping that new life will emerge and we will be  able to take the others dead branches off in time…..

We really want to

save this tree