Timber!

There was a large dead tree in our front garden – I noticed when we moved in that it was nearly dead, but we left it until this year to give it a chance to come back.  Unfortunately, it didn’t, so we had to fell it before it came over in an uncontrolled fashion.

R is a real chain saw expert with all sorts of certification in safety, so he is well qualified to fell large trees.  Actually this is not true, R is a man with a chain saw and big cojones.  He came into the room then and wished me to add that he is self-taught and has felled lots of trees before, which is quite true as where we lived in Lochgoilhead we had a small forest at the back of the house and if one needed to come down we had to do it ourselves.

Anyway, we did this one today.  It was a tiddler at about 6m tall so it was not that difficult.  We tied a rope round it and I stood a good long way back keeping tension on it.  R cut a wedge out of the front and I gave the rope a good hard pull to shift its weight forward.  Then R made a cut at the back and both of us hauled hard on the rope.  Down came the tree, with only a brief moment of excitement when it snagged slightly on the neighbouring tree.

Then R sliced it into logs and branches and I moved them over to the garage where I cut the branches into pieces and put them through the chipper.  We then piled the logs up and I disposed of them on FB to someone for firewood.  The tree was a Dove (handkerchief) tree and these are really beautiful, so I took a few of the residual living shoots and am trying to propagate them using a hormone rooting gel (I am not that hopeful but worth a try).

Anyway that took a couple of hours and saved us about £1000 I reckon.  J was notable for his absence during the whole process – later this evening I asked him why he had not come up to help “Were you felling the tree?” he asked innocently.  Only J could have a chainsaw and a woodchipper running outside his office window without him even noticing.