With all the gorgeous fall color around, it’s hard to look past the leaves to the trees. Once the leaves fall, though, you might find that your favorite fruit or ornamental trees have some deadwood in them. Deadwood removal is an important element of maintaining a healthy tree — death or decline of the entire tree may result if the deadwood is left in place. Dead or damaged wood can lend itself to penetration of diseases and insects.

When you were a kid, did you love to climb trees? Well, some people never grow out of some things. Take Janet Christrup, for example. For 16 years, she’s actually been making a living climbing trees. A seasoned tree surgeon, Christrup has pruned trees all the way from Florida to northern Ontario. Her favorite part of her profession is being high in an oak tree with the wind blowing and enjoying the beautiful view. Yet she’s interested enough in the science of trees that she’s working her way toward a doctorate in forest resources at the University of Maine.

Watching Christrup do this work alone is simply fascinating. She first throws a rubber weight on the end of a long rope through a sturdy crotch of a limb near the pruning site. Affixing the rope to her climbing belt, she straps herself in and hoists herself with magical ease 20 or 30 feet up into a tree. (You’ll appreciate this more if you try it yourself; I managed in about five minutes to get myself about a foot off the ground.) After tying herself to the tree, Christrup works diligently, anxious to see what the job will look like when she’s through. Working alone has its challenges, though. When a tool falls, it means sliding down the tree to fetch it, then hoisting herself back up to do the pruning.

Christrup first learned to climb professionally while rescuing sick and injured animals for the Humane Society in Florida. She learned climbing techniques from Bill Anneker, a nationally reknowned man who organized a worker-owned cooperative of people who prune trees for a living. When she first learned to climb, her climbing saddle was a homemade apparatus which consisted of two old seat belts and two O-rings. Since its construction didn’t lend itself to safety (Christrup could fall out of it if her position shifted), it has since been replaced by a professional canvas climbing belt.

The climbing techniques Christrup learned from Anneker (which carry over to her present work) focus on what is best for the tree rather than what is the easiest and fastest to do. Nearly all of her work is done using hand saws, and although she does have two chain saws, those are only used for branches or limbs which are too time consuming to prune with a hand saw.

Christrup recommends pruning trees year round except for two weeks in the spring when trees are beginning to set leaves and two weeks later this time of the season while leaves are turning color. Leaving the tree alone for those four weeks greatly benefits the trees, as they are able to put effort into producing and storing energy rather than in healing wounds.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist.