@Adair M Please dont talk to me like Im an idiot.
I did read the thread and I also read the 2 other threads about this tree and its problems this year.
I dont dispute the reasons why you said wiring in March when its pushing candles is bad. I know that its too easy to knock off candles then, I also know that bending branches around at the wrong time of year can cause them to slip thier bark and kill them. I agree the tree should not have been wired in March when its candles were extending.
However I am going to play devils advocate:
From the looks of it, he wired 4-5 branches in March and he used aluminum wire, the size of which isnt adequate to bend those branches at all.
The tree didnt start to show any decline until August, 5 months later and it wasnt just the branches that were wired. There was a picture taken some time after the wiring but before August and the tree looked fine. Candles continuing to extend.
The wiring may not have helped but the fact that the entire tree started to go down hill and not just the wired branches.
This leads me to believe that the unusually high, prolonged heat there this summer was the coup de gras for this tree.
If it was just the branches that were wired that died, Id agree with you that it was 100% the wiring.
Either way, its a shame. It was an interesting tree.