A couple years ago, we had a big ice storm. I was living in SoCal and my son and daughter in law were renting my home. I got a call from my DIL and while I was chatting on the phone with her, I kept hearing what sounded like gunshots in the background. I asked what was going on and she said the freeze was so bad, the tree limbs were fracturing. Kind of exploding from the inside out as the sap froze and expanded. Then the ice continued to build up and the weight broke branches left and right.
I came to visit a couple months later and was on hand to hire the climbers to take down the broken limbs and stack the wood on the curb for the city to dispose of. The heartbreak was that three of the trees wouldn't survive the damage they sustained, and the four left were misshapen and ugly. I had the three casualties cut down, but the stumps remind me how pretty that stand of trees USED to be.
When the tree service was taking down the deadfall and cutting down the trees, I chatted them up about when I could get the trees shaped up. They warned me not to mess with them for two years. They said that the trees would need that much time to recover from the trauma.
Well, guess what? It's been two years. For the past two years, I've looked out and seen the crummy state of that canopy and wished that my back yard looked better. Today, the tree service is coming to do the shape up.
It will probably take a couple of years for the growth of the trees to equal out and the look of them to become balanced again, but the specialists are going to be shaping them up so they grow straight and tall. And they are grinding the three stumps so I can do something else with that part of the garden.
One of my favorite parts of my back yard was that stand of trees. Even on the hottest of days, that part of the yard had a cooler shadiness. It won't surprise anyone that two of the trees that did survive hold up my very nice hammock. I should be thanking the Almighty that the hammock trees weren't the ones that had to come down. Maybe that's God's way of telling me to take time to lay in my hammock? I think so.
--Sandee Wagner
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3 comments:
Oh, in case you needed the update, I don't do anything the easy way. The tree service stump grinder threw a chain and is fetched up busted in my backyard. Go me!! spw
I've learned to love my stumps -- but then, I cut down the trees and use them for firewood. I have an adorable statue of a fairie reading a book perched on the stump near my office. The rest, I kick from time to time to see how far along the decaying process is. Give 'em eight or ten years, and they'll fall apart.
Marilyn,
My dad used to drill holes in them and fill them with gasoline. Soak 'em for a while and then burn them out. Probably some issues with that inside the city limits! I don't have the patience to wait 10 years, I can't imagine being in the house that long!! spw
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