Wednesday 5 May 2010

when a tree falls

Very windy here the last few days. One of the poor dead elms above the Lane could stand it no longer and started wavering in a very sad manner.
RP was delighted/disgusted that he could get out the chain saw thingy and hack away again - but on the whole he'd rather not, at the same time.
I quickly realised I was merely lumberjack's mate offering only timely advice, as ever.
For an impulsive person with no mathematical or spatial relationship expertise I do seem to have some talent in logistics...........kids and teaching will refine that talent i suppose.
It was a very tall tree.
Someone once told us that the elm beetle doesn't attack until the trees reach a certain height, if that is true they fly high.
I gazed with some trepidation up the ivy clad trunk and tried to measure how far it would fall from the neighbours garage below.
Fortunately the ivy actually helped as it netted the tree to the others [ashes I think] so once he had chopped sections off we could haul it down from the vertical to the lengthening horizontal, and then dismember it.
Two nearby dead elms reviewed our performance and decided to remain firm for now.