I spent today taking down and cutting up one of our favorite trees, a huge Turkey Oak that supported the famous "horsey swing". The horsey swing appeared one Christmas morning years ago hanging from a gigantic arching branch of this huge tree. The swing is made from a tire that has been cleverly cut to resemble a horse. You may have seen these around.Countless kids and adults had experienced hair raising rides on this swing.
For some reason, this tree leafed out and then almost immediately died last summer. We put off taking it down, partly for sentimental reasons and partly because of it's large size.
Now with another hurricane season arriving, it could wait no more. This was really a large tree with a DBH of two feet. (DBH = diameter at breast height). I had my son video the felling of the tree. I figured if I calculated wrong and it hit the house we could at least get on one of those "I did something dumb and filmed it" shows. However all went well and it went exactly where I meant for it to go...(he said smugly).
The barred owls that I mentioned on a previous post watched all of this from atop the power pole next to the house. I don't know what goes on inside an owl's head, but they were probably wondering why I would take down such a great, future hollow tree. I got a photo even though it was late in the day and cloudy. I'll post it as soon as I get it developed.
We had a fantastic tropical style rain today that dropped 2 inches in about an hour of heavy downpour. The frogs are singing tonight.
2 comments:
Too bad about the tree. I'm glad I got to see it before it had to come down.
I always wonder why people video tape some of things that make it on those shows. Either they expect something to go wrong or don't think anything can.
Had the tree fell on me, the boat, or the house, the video would probably have been worth a few dollars. I'm going to get some new rope and rig the swing on sufficiently scary oak limb.
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