Interestingly, the picture I found is from last year when our cactus garden was in full bloom. What I thought I took pictures of this morning was the pine tree you see behind the cactus.
OK, I'm not so crazy. I found the before pictures. They were on my other computer in a folder with unrelated pictures. But I'm leaving last year's cactus picture for you to admire.
Here's a picture of the tree before I took the saw to it.
The poor pine tree was not growing where it should have been. First, it was in the shade of a large ash tree. It was stretching far to the side to find some sunlight. It was growing horizontally. Last winter was somewhat wetter than it had been for several years (though still below the average rainfall). The tree seemed to have lost some of its grip in the wet soil and had tilted even lower.
The second problem is that it was much too close to the house. After last year's firestorm we decided that we needed to enlarge the defensible space around the house. So we decided that the tree, pretty though it was, had to go.
Jerry took a clandestine picture of me hacking at the tree. I'm in my tuxedo T-shirt. It has long sleeves to protect me from sun, sap and bugs (I haven't heard of problems with deer ticks here but I'll try to protect myself from them, too).
After I got all the branches off the tree I cut the greenery and the branches less than a half inch off of them. I fed all of that to the chipper/shredder. It's amazing how quickly the shredder reduced the branches and needles to mulch. It took me longer to prepare the pile than for the machine to take care of it.
So after a couple of hours of sawing the branches off the tree and another four or so hours of dealing with the parts that could go through the shredder we have this naked tree trunk.
And a pile of branches that couldn't be shredded. (I'll feed the smaller branches to the chipper chute of the chipper/shredder next weekend.)
And a pile of shredded needles and small branches. Acid loving plants will appreciate this mulch. We probably have enough mulch to cover an acre but I don't think we have that many camellias (we have one camellia!).
Next week: The Escondido Chainsaw Massacre. I hope I don't cut my hand off when I work on taking down the trunk.
5 comments:
Send the trunk to me. My cats could use it as a scratching post. Also make sure you wear ear protection while using your chainsaw. That reminds me of a story...many years ago, I was invited to help out a marketing research company and receive wonderful gifts as salary. One survey I filled out for them concerned chainsaws. Which did I think were the best brand of chainsaws, etc Since I paid no attention to chainsaws or chainsaw ads, I couldn't even name a brand. I put down "General Electric."
I'm sorry about your tree. We had a large spruce tree on the south side of the yard that succumbed to bark beetles and the drought. We called Jonas the Tree Guy, who took it down and carted off the waste for reuse. We were sad.
Are you going to plant another tree to replace it?
exhnnrHaving to take out a tree is always sad. But necessity is necessity. And that is A PILE of mulch! I wish I had it in my garden.
Why did my comment include the letters I had to type in?
I'm sorry for the loss of your tree. We hate losing trees. Since we have the gray water tank attached to the little house, we are able to use many gallons of water on the pinons along the east side of our property. I makes me sad to cut down trees., but you have to keep your home and yourselves safe!
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