You Learn Something New Every Day...

My father used to say that "You learn something new every day," and I have always believed that.  At least if you are a curious person.  So I happened to notice these curly hoses surrounding this tree on Fifth Avenue, on my walk up to the Met.  After seeing several of these, I saw a man with a NY Parks Department shirt on and asked him what it was about.  I was stunned with his answer!  They are injecting a fungicide into the base of the Dutch Elm Trees that line the sidewalk on the Central Park side of Fifth avenue!  They have to do that once every two years, and they have been able to save the trees from Dutch Elm disease!  I thought that ALL Dutch Elm trees were already all gone!  Not the case.  He said that Central Park has a lot of Dutch Elms.  I remember growing up, people telling me about the deaths of enormous numbers of these trees.  What a relief to hear that these trees have been saved.

So I really didn't do a good job of reporting this story!  I should have done a wider shot that would have showed more of the equipment used to do this process.  There was a large storage battery connected to an electric pump that pumped the fungicide mixture out of that garbage pail and into the tubing where it was injected into the tree.  Sorry for failing to do a good job on this story...

And this is what the beautiful Dutch Elm trees look like.  I have done so many photographs of pedestrians walking up and down Fifth Avenue in the "tunnel" created by these beautiful trees.  And I never knew they were Dutch Elms.  Like  my father said: "You learn something new every day."