Brush Piles For Your Wild Things

So, last week we were doing some tree trimming.

This photo is for all you "safety saints" who will feel the urge to question going up a ladder with a chainsaw.
You can see it wasn't all that high ... my ladder will go a lot longer than that , 34 feet to be exact.

Plus, I didn't climb the ladder with a running chainsaw, heck that would be crazy.

I started it once I reached the top.
:)

If you look closely, you'll see the ladder is ratchet strapped to the tree at a low angle, so balancing is not a challenge.
Center of mass and all that...

The reason for all this (besides pure fun), was that the lower branches of a couple of nice oaks were drooping down so low that they were interfering with travel through the yard.
Plus, they were doomed anyway by the self-pruning of low branches all trees do as upper branches shade them out.

I don't recommend one arm chainsawing, but in this case, I couldn't work safely around the limbs I wanted to cut until I cleared out some of the dead hanging palm fronds.
(Thank you Tony Horton) 

Instead of doing this with all of the brush and adding more carbon to the atmosphere, I hauled a bunch of the branches out to a former wildlife brushpile site.

The site, pictured below is whats left of a brushpile I made years ago by using a wire crate as a support and layering branches over it.
The wire and wood crate had contained the faux stone I installed when I redid the fireplace and living room. At the time it was destined for the landfill ... until I decided to let it work here rather than take up space there.

As you can see above, in the world of brushpiles, this one was "tired".
If the purpose of wildlife brush piles is to provide habitat and temporary shelter for critters, this one had melted down to a point of ineffectiveness.

This is what it looks like after "rebrushing".

Here's a view from a different side.
Now it's back to being a place where a cardinal can dodge a hawk or make a nest, a ratsnake can hunt for cardinal eggs, warblers can flit about for whatever they flit about, butterflies can make cocoons,  rabbits can rest, lizards can bask and avoid black racers, and all kinds of insects can creep, crawl, and munch.

I have some other brush pile plans to create, they involve some old decrepit fence posts, but that project hasn't happened yet.

IF you want to see the original post about the making of this brushpile about 5 years ago, just click here.