A good friend of mine who just happens to love puttering around in the garden, and is simply happy to see things grow, called me the other day.

I could tell by his anxious tone of voice that he was distressed about something, and after a bit of prodding I found out that two red maples, both about seven years old, and at opposite ends of his one acre lot had mysteriously dropped their leaves and for all intents and purposes appeared totally dead.

Being overdue for a visit anyway, I travelled the hour and a half to his country home and lo and behold, just like he told me, were two dead maples,[not resting,not hibernating]... plain old gone.

I knew it had been a pretty dry spring and summer, but everything else in his yard seemed fine, and maples are for the most part, a pretty tolerant plant.

"Has anything else died mysteriously around here lately?", the newly promoted plant detective, queried, but my friend Tom, just looked at me and shook his head,...." no, not unless you count weeds."

A nagging thought occurred to me, so I began to interrogate my friend a little further. Not mercilessly, mind you, but I was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or the other.

"Did the trees die before, or after these so called weeds, I asked?"

"Well, now that you mention it, a couple of days after," he replied, cautiously.

I knew that if I kept up browbeating the suspect, er.... my friend, that he, like so many others before him would crack, like a peanut shell, so I decided to show a little mercy.

What my old friend had done was spray around his yard to cut down on the weeds. He had received a little herbicide [Roundup] from one of his farmer buddies and after diluting it a little, proceeded to remove those irritating little buggers wherever he could.

Unfortunately, for Tom, and his maple trees, these herbicides work on anything with green growth and sure enough, around the base of his trees were small sprouts from the maple itself.

A lot of folks use sprays without really being aware of how powerful and destructive they can be, when used inappropriately.

A few minutes of pruning around the trees would have saved Tom a lot of trouble.

Removing a little sod from the base and putting a plastic ground cover with a little topsoil or mulch on top, would have cut down on the number of weeds and also made it easier to pull any that followed.

After a couple of beers, and some catching up I left a saddened, but wiser friend to plan out his new planting strategies for the following year and headed home.

More...... on his progress later.

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