I love Mike Shoup! His enthusiasm and his fascination with roses are so infectious.

And I'm blushing. By the way, Dave, "delightful and hilarious" is also my capsule description of you.

Dear Dave and Trish, an ace podcast! I loved every minute if it and I agree Zuzu is incredible! Of course the rose is the national flower of England and is worn by our soccer players and Rugby players, who play for England.
Sorry to hear about your oaks, as we have plenty of them although they too are a bit wet and cold at the moment. It is -3 F here and is so cold with the wind.
Regards to you all from a very cold place.
Neil.
p.s I do hope your Magnolias are OK? We have Iris reticulata out with snowdrops and crocus at the same time, how strange the weather has been.

Now it's my turn to blush.

Thanks for the kind words, Neil!

I LOVED this podcast!! I started listening to it and was grinning from ear to ear when you started describing Zuzu, had to pause it to go t-mail her to come here!
I knew Mike Shoup would be a good interview, I had seen him in a Youtube video and he is passionate about what he does.

And about the crashing tree tops!

I love it!

I just LOVE these podcasts!

Did you see the pavilion and facilities where you can have a wedding, party, etc. How wonderful to be married surrounded by all those roses

Pulling your trees down really resonated with me Dave. I can't wait to tell Hank your trick! We almost always pull our trees down so we can control where they fall. Last year we had to cut a live tree because it was leaning toward the house.

We have a 40 foot extension ladder and Hank climbs as far as he can go and starts with logging chains and when those run out, we switch to ropes and hook it all up to the bobcat. As he is cutting, I keep "some" tension on the chains and ropes and keep watch on the top of the tree. When I see it ready to go, I start driving FAST He also does something with transit to figure out how tall the tree is so he knows where the top will land. The math is too far over my head but I'm sure you understand it. He hasn't missed yet.

Great photos Vic. Trish and I do things a lot the way you and Hank do, but we don't have a bobcat.

When we moved from OH, our neighbor called and asked Hank if he could buy his bobcat thinking Hank wasn't going to bring it down here. Hank said he would sell his wife before he sold his bobcat - kidding...

He bought it new in1986 so it's old but sure has paid for itself.

You have a huge tractor, that would work, huh?

We do have a couple of tractors and we have indeed used them in taking down a few trees. The trick is not going too much and snapping the rope!!

Great podcast! and I'm a Mike Shoup fan now too!

We lost so many trees, some of our huge hickory trees but mostly oaks in the same drought you all are talking about. Dave, I'm going to have to replay the podcast for my hubby to listen to your tree pulling instrutions. He recently went and bought a bigger chainsaw just for cutting down dead trees. No tractor or Bobcat (it's at the top of his wish-list) but he has used the truck to assist in pulling the trees after they fell.

Dear Dave, we buy ex military Land Rovers as they are dirt cheap. Take the original engine out and put a Rover V8 in the normally tired out engines place. A Land Rover will go anywhere being a 4X4 and have proven themselves world wide. They come, well the early ones did with a PTO like a tractor and most have winches front and rear. These winches can pull most things and are fed by electric on a remote control, that is very controllable. The original steel hawser on the winches is far too thick for pulling tress down, and not long enough. So the lads on the farm change the original cable for a thinner alloy one that is long and strong. Then it is easy to pull trees with one of them and to connect a shredder/chipper to the back of it on the PTO. All the small branches we shred or chip as you may call it, as I use the wood if suitable to smoke food with!
Regards to all.
Neil.
p.s this one has not got a winch on the front!

Impressive! I can surely imagine an almost unlimited number of uses for such a vehicle.

I loved the podcast with Mike Shoup. Loved what he said about not using commercial fertilizers, makes sense that his method would keep roses much healthier.

Sure would love to meet Zuzu in person, loved the way you described her.