We had a pretty impressive windstorm here in the week between Christmas and New Years. Mostly it was just very blustery and a little rainy with a few tornado warnings around. We were not even remotely concerned. It was just a good day to stay indoors. But as it turns out, it was a strong enough wind that one tree lost a limb. I say limb as if it was nothing, a mere twig. But it was so much more than that. This one branch was as big as a good sized tree. Yeah they grow 'em big down here. The tree in question, in the photo above is very tall. I am terrible with guessing things so I will not even pretend to know how tall this tree is. We will just leave it at "very". And the point where the limb came down was toward the top. You can see the raw wound in this photo. I'll circle it. I suppose it doesn't look like much at that distance. We will try a close up instead. I really want you to have a grasp of the size of this thing. It helps to tell the story properly. Poor tree. That looks like it must have hurt! Anyway, soo the giant branch broke off from the even more giant tree (as I already said) and it was left, caught up in other trees, shrubs, cable and a fence so that while parts of it were touching the ground, it was not resting on the ground. If you follow that? I will be honest. I'm so foolish that when I first noticed this, out the bathroom window the day after the storm, I thought it was no big deal. I just mentally added it to my list of gotta do's for the day. I believed that I would go out and drag the branch out of where ever it was hung up and haul it up to the spot where I leave other things for the lawn guys to take away. To be fair, the tree is in the far corner of the back of the yard so it was easy to mistake the enormity of the task at hand from that distance. At least until I got closer and saw the that limb itself was nearly as big around as me. Mercy! Tentatively I grabbed a few likely looking branches and attempted to wiggle it a bit. It did not move one iota. Dang. I wrapped my arms around the larger part of the branch and attempted once more to heave. I got my knees under me, bent a bit and tried....to..... lift....... Nope. Nothin'. Ok clearly this was beyond my ability. I pointed it out to Tim and he promised that we would address it, together, on New Years Eve day as he had that day off. Excellent we had a plan. On Thursday, I found a hand saw and began cutting some of the smaller branches off. My thought being that if more branches were gone, we would be able to better see where the tree was hung up and untangle it and then move forward from there. Sounds like a good plan. Turns out, sawing is hard work. Actually I already knew that as I have sawed many a, Much Smaller, tree down since we moved here already. But there is something almost hypnotic about the rhythm of sawing and once I got into it, it was almost kind of zen. I worked on the tree for about an hour on Thursday, made significant headway and then remembered that we have a Sawzall. Wouldn't that be easier? Knowing myself as I do, and how prone to accidents as I am, I decided that I should absolutely positively not be the person driving the Sawzall. Nope. That could wait until the next day. On Friday we began. I continued to cut off branches with the handsaw while Tim tackled the limb itself and the thicker branches. We worked well as a team and got sweaty and dirty together. In short order we were covered in sawdust, leaves, dirt and other things that I do not wish to examine too closely because I really do not want to know what they were. Ick. It took quite awhile but eventually we got it untangled, cut into bite sized pieces and piled up patiently waiting for the lawn guys to take it away. We felt very much like frontiers people! It was honestly almost fun. It bears mentioning that the beautiful hardwood limbs, that smelled soo good, could probably be carved into something beautiful and/or functional if either of us had that talent. (we seriously don't)
I am reasonably certain that the tree will heal and survive, as will the smaller trees and shrubs below it that got smashed into and required a little surgery themselves. But we did manage to not destroy the fence or the cable, (thought it was a near thing as few times). We got the job done ourselves rather than call someone else to do it for us. And there is absolutely a bit of pride involved in that. So ends the tale of the giant broken tree limb~ Oh this is me sitting on one of those giant branches with the pile of smaller branches behind me. Job well done!
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AuthorYup, this is me. Some people said, "Sam, you should write a Blog". "Well, there's a thought", I thought to myself. And so here it is. Archives
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