Thursday, June 28, 2012

Big wind plus Big Tree Equals Big Work


This great event happened a few weeks ago but I had so much going on, I didn't post it. I have girls camp this week so I thought I would finally post about it as I had to post four days before leaving as I won't have internet at camp. I am sure I will bore you to tears with girls camp pictures and stories as I haven't been since I ran one 23 years ago for a large group of girls. I am heading up with my three youngest Princesses so it is sure to be a good time. 
 
We had a horrible week with wind a few weeks ago and two nights in a row it woke me. In the morning, I didn't look in the back yard but I got a call from one princess informing me that our tree was a casualty to the storm and wind. 

It lost two major branches. I was thankful that the "tire d" swing branch wasn't lost. The girls and neighborhood kids along with some nieces and nephews would be sad about that if it happened. 

I couldn't get the chain saw started. That didn't leave us with much alternative. We got out the little hand saw. The girls were troopers as it took us about a full week to get all the branches down, cut up, and put into the garbage. 

The first day happened right before garbage day so we broke off all the little branches we could and stuffed them into garbage cans and dragged them to the curb. 

The next day, we took the now empty cans and cut up some larger branches which filled most of the cans again. 
 
There were two MAJOR branches about the size of my youngest Princess that our little saw was not making it through. I called in the neighbors and they brought over a chain saw but I wasn't here and they just saw the one branch and missed the other. 

I had a wonderful neighbor that came the first day and helped us try to cut the hanging branch out of the tree. He just about landed on the ground sliding down a few feet which scared me to gasping. Then he came back the next day with a ladder and helped get it down as we didn't succeed the first day. 
 
I waited another day or two and my busy neighbors hadn't been able to get back so the girls and I wanting to get the back yard garden finished, took the saw to the last branch and with four of us taking turns, finally got through that last big branch and now all of the bark, sharp broken pieces are out of the yard due to some mowing and raking and scouring on our part as nothing hurts like stepping onto a bark shard or broken spiked twig. 

The yard is actually looking quite good as I finished working on some broken sprinklers several days this week and adding a few where we were having some dead areas.  

I know we will need to replace the entire tree soon as we lose branches yearly but at this point,  we still need the shade. I did plant three trees around it in hopes they will be larger when it does come down.

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