Yesterday, I walked through the woods with my father-in-law. He pointed out standing dead that he wanted me to take down so I could use the wood for firewood this year. Two huge beech trees looked to be dead, but they were so big I was a bit apprehensive to tackle them myself, so I decided to pass on them and tag more manageable ones.
Early this afternoon I headed out to start cutting and I was pretty surprised to find that one of the trees I was looking at yesterday actually broke off about a third of the way up and only thirty feet or so of trunk was left standing! It took me a minute to figure out what happened. It must have been during the heavy rain and wind last night.
What are the chances of that? I spent a few hours cutting and splitting (with my wife Amber on the wheel barrow, she insisted on helping) and got the tree all cleaned up. It was very cool to find a tree I wanted already dropped when I went in the woods!
To the best of my knowledge, no one heard the tree fall.
2 comments:
Matt, I had a similar experience last year. I had this tall, dead tree right next to the power lines at the front of my property. I remember walking out on a Sunday morning to get my newspaper and taking note of this tree thinking "I better cut that down, but knowing my luck, I'll drop it right on the wires and take out power to the whole town." I remember thinking to myself, "I wish a heavy wind would just pick up tomorrow while I'm at work and let nature do its thing!"
Monday morning I reached the end of my driveway in my car and glared at my tree, then proceeded to work. As luck would have it, we had wind gusts that day. When I returned home from work, not only was my tree down, but it was lying nicely on an existing log pile. It broke at its trunk about 8 feet off the ground which was now a manageable height that I could cut without any threat to the power lines. Was someone hearing my thoughts on Sunday?
LOL.
Nice job with your blog, Matt. Glad to hear that the tree behaved most favorable for you.
Deb
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