"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either." ~ Elizabeth Zimmerman

6/26/12

The Very Big Tree

A couple summers ago a very big tree in our backyard died. We have significant emotional attachment to it, so it's been waiting for us to 'get over it'. We finally got to the point where we could do something about it. Even though this tree is down at the bottom of the hill, it is tall enough to still hit the house should it fall in a storm. We really needed to do something about it.

A couple weeks ago a neighbor of ours, who has been a logger all his life, asked if he could have it. He would cut it down, haul it away, and leave a nice neat slash pile for us to burn later. No charge. I looked into it. It costs about $2000 to hire someone to do that. We said yes.

This morning Les arrived to cut the tree down. This is the tree (satellite dishes in foreground).


Click to embiggen

 I couldn't fit the whole thing in the camera view, so I took 2 pics and put them together. (For some reason, my camera made the bottom part brighter.) You get a good sense of the size of it.

I videoed Les cutting it down. Before the video starts he cut a wedge out of the side that faces the direction he wanted it to fall. He also put a big cable on it hooked up to a truck that pulled on it a bit. He wanted to make sure the tree did not fall in the wrong direction.



Although you don't hear it in the video, thunder was rolling and the rain was pouring. I took that as mother nature being just as sad as I was.

The below picture gives some perspective on tree size. Les is the one wielding the chain saw. His friend Mike is in the yellow rain jacket. Mike is going to cut up the bigger branches and take them home for firewood.


Click to embiggen

Can you believe the size of those branches? Some of them are bigger than whole trees we've got around here.

Click to embiggen

I counted the rings. This tree was about 112 years old

when it died. I expected it to be much older considering it's size. What I found very interesting, in light of all the rain we've been getting this year, is the first 70 years of this trees life were very very wet years. Some of the rings are half an inch wide. The last 20 years, the years we've been living here, the rings are very thin. So maybe all this rain we're getting is just a return to 'normal'? Who knows?

Les and Mike spent some time afterward cutting some of the branches off. But the rain got to pouring so hard they decided it was time to go home. It will probably take a couple days to get the job finished.

Now my yard smells like fresh pine and I feel much safer.

I've got 2 more trees for Les to cut and haul away. He's happy about that. One of them is the one that got hit by lightening.

Speaking of rain, we've been getting a LOT of it. Way more than normal. One of my tomato plants has drowned to death. The other one is looking sickly. Actually all the domestic plants are looking sickly. My daughter and I planted the garden the day before Fathers Day. I hope the seeds sprout instead of rot.

Live long and prosper. \\//

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