Took me 5 hours to figure out one pine was leaning because of a buried cinder block
Had a 60 foot loblolly in a client's yard in Raleigh that was leaning about 4 degrees and I could not figure out why. I checked the root flare, probed the soil, even ran an air spade around the base looking for girdling roots or rot. Turned out there was an old cinder block footing buried 18 inches down on one side, left over from a fence that got torn out in the 80s. Probably took me 5 hours total across two trips for something a shovel and a metal probe would have found in 10 minutes. Anybody else run into old footings or debris messing with root plates like this?