He'd gone off in his van to fetch the Sunday paper from the shop a couple of kilometres away (neater than a mile and a quarter, don't you think?) and on his return, less than ten minutes later, he found his way blocked.
The tree that has fallen died back badly about twenty years ago, so we had all the main branches removed, in the hope that pollarding it would stimulate it into growth again. It didn't work, the tree did die after a few years and we'd just left it ever since. It would have been a pretty large undertaking to remove it. Today, it was not that windy - a gusty breeze, but the Sage said that some of the gusts were quite strong.
As you can see, it was completely over the drive and had also brought down the fence to the Ups and Downs, as you can see here.
It was fairly evident that we were going to be late to the party. The Sage had already phoned our lovely friend, who has a chainsaw and is quite kind and helpful enough to turn out on a Sunday lunchtime to use it - he was out, but expected home soon and his wife, who is as helpful as he is, cheerily said that lunch would be postponed while he helped us out. Of course, Al and family were as stuck as we were, and we were also going to pick up Ro and Dora - in fact, a couple of other families were going to the party, which was mainly a barbecue, and playing in the garden for the children as they are all very young.
Good Friend with Chainsaw arrived soon afterwards to inspect the situation, then went home for said saw and got back at 2 o'clock, by which time I'd cut off a lot of the ivy. All the greenery you see is ivy, the tree is completely dead. In fact, here is the root end. It had powdered away.
The four of us - Good Friend, the Sage, Al and I - worked for three-quarters of an hour and cleared enough space to get a car through. He'll come back another day and cut the rest up.
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| It made quite a hole when it landed. Fortunate that it was on the grass, not the drive, and even more fortunate that none of us was in the way. |
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| Parts of the trunk were hollow - it looked as if hornets or something had built a nest here at some time |
One could say that we were lucky that no one was hurt, but really it would have been very unlucky if anyone had happened to be in the way at the time. But it was quite enough drama for one day.
Not sure if there will be any usable timber - probably not, as it had to be cut up into liftable chunks. But we'll have plenty of firewood for the winter.
14 comments:
It could have been so very much worse.
I shall be asking for danger money for coming down the drive, when we next build the wall.
Could have been a close one
Well, how very dramatic. I wish I could make a telling link between this event and the Feast of the Assumption yesterday, but I'm going to have to leave that to Dave.
Did anybody hear it?
Did you look for other fragile trees around?
Ro and I considered whether, since no one appeared to have heard it, it made a sound as it fell.
We are going to take off a couple of branches of the big oak before the winter, and we've already pruned the big yew, a few weeks ago, And we're removed a couple of large, top-heavy pine trees. And this summer, the fir trees behind the bungalow were taken down. In fact, we're about due to plant some more trees to make up for it all.
Eternal questions :)
What an exciting story! And great pictures too. This kind of stuff doesn't happen very often where I live.
Dave is evidently going to yomp across the marsh and wade through the stream rather than risk the hazards of our drive again. Although I have to say it doesn't happen that often here either. It has before though, do you remember when a tree fell on Al and Dilly's house?
Dangerous beasts, trees of Norfolk.
First cousin of triffids they are. If triffids have made it to your part of the continent.
Wow, fabulous! That kind of thing will never happen in our life-spaces.
We did have a flood in Lynn at the weekend though, which caused travel chaos. Six inches of water built up on Eddie Beni Way and traffic ground to a halt, being directed by the hobby bobbies.
What nobody can understand is this. The "flood" was directly outside the fire station, and lapped upon part of its forecourt. Who told the firemen that they weren't allowed to carry a pump 30 metres and clear the "inundation" away sharp-ish?
It wasn't deep. North Lynn urchins were riding their bikes through the water, and if they stopped it reached the tops of their trainers.
I love England, don't you, Simon? The way we make a crisis out of everything!
I daresay it didn't tick all the boxes in their Health and Safety manual. I never thought I'd see the day when firemen and the police were obliged to be wussses, but it's not their fault. It's the jobsworths at Head Office who never get their toes wet.
N-no, thankfully, these creatures seem to be contained on the island. I know the motif of the man-eating-tree, as it is living in Northern American story telling. Franconian forrests are inhabited by some different creatures (Hullawetz, Büebel, Nöck, Zwerge) but trees and plants are basically seen as friendly; and triffids did not make it here.
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