McHenry County Blog

Here is the ash tree that shades our home during the summer.

I sent my April 23rd storyto Wayne White, the Board Certified Master Arborist who is going to make my ask tree probably the only one left in Crystal Lake’s and Lakewood’s Country Club Additions subdivision to see if I had made any mistakes and he sent me the following email.

Here's my neighbor's ash tree. I figure my back yard will soon have a lot more sun during the morning.

From the progress of the leafing on the ask tree over our home, I sense that it about time for him to make his second sweep through Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. He usually makes his second sweep in June, but the season is advanced about a month by my estimate.

"Chop 'em down" is the strategy of Lake in the Hills, as this sign indicates. Click to enlarge any image.

If you want to see what he does, this 2008 article has enough photos to show you.

This time he will be injecting the insecticide to keep the Emerald Ash Borers away into the cambium of the tree (the part of the tree that draws nutrients up to the branches), as well as spraying around the tree trunk again.

In any event, here’s what he wrote:

“Awesome story as usual…. one thing I have to compliment you on (you deserve many of course) is that unlike many other newspaper reporters I have run into over the years, you have a knack for getting the details right.

“I enjoy reading your articles as they tell the whole story without any embellishment or mistakes.

“Well done – I knew that if I had time you would have loved a picture of my new truck.

“Actually a 1998 F350 dually but it is completely wrapped in EAB fighting theme.

“For the first time I am so busy I need help and my two daughters are both working for me now.

“Both licensed with Illinois for Pesticide applications.

The directors of Country Club Property Owners Association apparently didn't heed the warnings about the Emerad Ash Borer.

“My youngest Melinda was involved doing the entire City of West Chicago contract this year. They have renewed my contract for the next 6 years for approx 1800 street tree ash.

“Roselle renewed this year for both the city and the park district (over 600 and 200 respectively).

“I also got back Downers Grove for the third year.

“Roselle is thrilled as they had a third party consultant review the ash trees in the city this year that were treated by me last year and it appears that 99% of them survived even in the face of an exploding insect population last year.

“As the first year is the hardest one to get through when starting treatment – we are well on our way to a huge success story brewing there over the next few years.

“Two weeks after my story about Arlington heights hit google alerts – the city council there voted to reimburse residents $50 per tree (one time only) for treatment of trunk injection ONLY with TreeAge – their favored treatment method.

“Why they would favor one treatment over another when they know nothing about what works is ridiculous but I feel I may have had something to do with their decision as MANY residents read my story about them and were up in arms……. It reminded me instantly of you and your never ending passion for writing on the web.

“It works. If you search ‘emerald ash borer treatment’ on google, yahoo, or bing, I come up on page one of free listings.

Here's how CCAPOA attacked the Emerald Ash Borer problem near the Lakewood's Gate 7 Beach boat ramp.

There's still time to call and make an appointment to have your ash tree treated.

“Even my website has grown in importance with google etc.

“The fact you link to it is HUGE as your site is of major importance to google because of your readership.”

= = = = =
This was not a paid advertisement for the value of advertising on McHenry County Blog, but I do trade Wayne White his company’s ad for keeping it alive.

Got something to trade and want a better Google listing, shoot me an email.

Spring had just begun to pop my daffodils when summer came.

It was delightful driving around my neighbor after attending the First United Methodist Church of Crystal Lake.  Newcomers call it “The Gates.”  That’s probably a real estate salesperson’s moniker for what is about a 400-home subdivision called Country Club Additions.

Taking home one of the two friends who slept over Saturday night, we found this toilet-papered home at the intersection of Broadway and Melrose Lane (Gate 10).

The flowering trees have not yet popped, but some teens gave two decorations of a different nature when they TPed them. Blowing in the wind.

Two fishermen were out trolling in front of CCAPOA’s Gate 7 Beach.

The swimming bouys are not yet up and boats are not anchored, so it was easy to fish this close to Crystal Lake's shoreline.

Two bicyclers had stopped to sun themselves on the beached raft.

Beats getting a sandy back and the view is hard to beat.

A power boat was being launched at the Gate 7 ramp.

"Keys Time " was being launched at the property owners' boat ramp. Any of the 400+ homeowners have the right to launh their boats at the ramp, if they join CCAPOA and buy a boat key.

Since my Class of 1960 high school classmate Mike Firth’s family lived at this home two lots from the boat launching, these scilla have probably been multiplying. I’m been trying to make the land next to Lake Avenue look like this. Maybe 50 years from now it will.

Scillia brighten this lawn on Lake Short Drive in Lakewood.

Both Gate 3 swings were filled with families enjoying the 87-degree day weather.

Gate 3 has a great view of the Crystal Lake Park District's Main Beach House.

Others were walking their dogs.

Gate 21 proven irresistable to this woman who was walking her dog.

Other neighbors were out raking leaves One said she really disliked having to put them in bags, a view I whole heartedly share.

This man has a higher tech solution to putting his leaves in bags. Guess when one lives in an oak-hickory forest, getting rid of leaves is a necessary evil.

This little pooch had just finished romping in Crystal Lake.

This little dog went swimming or at least wading at Gate 13 Beach.

Other dog walkers were at the Gate 13 Beach. In the background, a lake front property owner’s pier has been pulled from shore by the melting ice.

So, if you haven't taken your pier in before the lake froze, how do you retireve it when it ends up out in the lake?

My neighbor has drainage problems which he was trying to fix by digging a ditch toward the dry well in front of his home.

Hostas cover the corner every fall.

Some daffodils on Lake Avenue have made their appearance. The tree house can be seen behind the fence.

In the southeast nook next to the sun porch, the daffodils really made their presence known today. Last night there was only one blooming.

This is what happens when one does not divide and transplant daffodils.

The clouds are rolling in, so it’s time to plant those bulbs I didn’t get in last December that are sprouting the in garage. Maybe I can salvage them.

I got the boat in earlier this year than ever before.

My son and his junior high friends have been spending a lot of time at our Country Club Property Owners Property Owners Association’s Beach 7. Lots of sand, a raft, pretty warm days.

Zebra Mussels on a stick near Beach 7 on the south side of Crystal Lake.

Before launch date, he told me kids were getting their feet cut on zebra mussels.

I found my first zebra mussels while we had our pontoon boat anchored near the North Shore, where the bottom is rocky. That was July of 2008.

It’s pretty near the Crystal Lake Park District’s boat ramp, so I figured someone who doesn’t keep his boat on the lake had had it in Lake Michigan and decided to bring it into Crystal Lake for day.

How sad that he used such poor judgment.

A month later, they were on the south side of the lake. My son found them.

When I took the boat out last fall, I saw zebra mussels all over the pier poles.

And the photo you see here shows how the sharp-edged creatures covered a stick on the bottom of the lake.

The Crystal Lake City Council has certainly displayed good judgment in not allowing any boats to be brought onto Vulcan Lakes.

Crystal Lake's Gate 7 Beach at the Gate 9 end on the morning of March 20, 2010.

The ice disappeared from Crystal Lake on Friday, March 19th.

March 15th, same location. The ice on Crystal Lake was rotten.

Three boys of summer were out on the raft at Gate 7 in Lakewood, Illinois, about 8 o’clock Monday night.

I had stopped to take a photo of the sunset.

I guess they decided it was time to go in.

The first one let out a shout after his dive toward the beach. Apparently, he had dried out while on the CCAPOA raft on the south side of Crystal Lake.

I kept taking photos and got this one of another of the youths diving in.

What looked to me like a blue heron flew low across the lake from the west and landed on the front lawn immediately east of CCAPOA Gate 13 Beach on Crystal Lake.

Next an egret landed in the same front lawn.

Ray Christi lamented that he didn’t have his camera, but mine was in the car, so I got it.

We walked closer. The egret took off over the swimming area.

I got this shot.

Neither of us saw where the other bird went.

Last Saturday, March 14th, I captured the last ice on Crystal Lake.

Naturally, it was in the shade on the South side of the lake.

The lake was as pure as it ever gets.

No muddy bottom stirred up by the motor boats.

And, there was no need for the “No Swimming” sign erected a couple of years ago at CCAPOA’s Gate 3 Beach in Lakewood. That’s the beach where trailer boaters decided additional boat slips were more important than continuing to let little kids have a small beach at which to swim.

Later the same day, this woman walking her black dog stopped to enjoy the view.

It was the Ides of October and the tree leaves were turning and falling.

The CCAPOA pier at Gate 9 on Crystal Lake in Lakewood had no boats.

It was the Ides of October and the tree leaves were turning and falling.

The CCAPOA pier at Gate 9 on Crystal Lake in Lakewood had no boats.

It was between 5 and 6 last Wednesday afternoon.

My wife and two of her girl friends were discussing chick books, ones about the stories quilts tell, which one’s cousin had just gotten published, murder solving clubs, stuff like that.

I joked that they should write a book about women getting together on a pontoon boat to solve murders.

Now that I think about it, maybe it would be my murder they would solve.

Maybe they would commit it (after all, I was misbehaving).

Anyway, I’m looking at the late afternoon sun reflecting off Crystal Lake, taking photos of and past the women.

That’s when I looked down beneath the neighboring dock at CCAPOA’s Gate 7 Beach dock.

Above, you see what I saw.

I think it’s the bungee cord that was found wrapped around my neck…in the forthcoming book, of course.

Think I will get a photo credit if they use this picture on the cover?