The Cool House: If a tree falls...

Saturday, April 04, 2009

If a tree falls...

Made a HUGE mistake in walking up the neighbor's drive to chat. Sorry, that came out wrong, the chat was very nice, as is the neighbor. No, the mistake I made was to look at my yard from the north side, the side of neglect, an area that we cleared of debris and dead shrubs wrapped in burlap a couple of years ago but that we have done nothing to since then. Because we don't rake the leaves here, allowing them to smother the weeds and enrich the soil, the ground is about 4" higher on our side of the fence; there are a few branches that fell during the winter and many twigs. Generally the area looks unkempt but the source of my dismay was a huge conifer that has fallen sideways and is being propped up by the fence. If it were to fall completely it would probably take out the fence too...
As the tree is still green we guess it's still alive but half its roots are out of the ground. We've no idea how long it's been like that, whether the roots have frozen in this season of frigid temperatures, but we have to try to save it. So the mission for tomorrow is to dig around the side of the rootball and see if we can prop it up, then brace it with stakes. That's the plan anyway. Of course the whole venture could go horribly wrong, the tree could fall on the person supporting it...
So many scenarios, none of them good.

1 comment:

Nadine @ BDG said...

Hope you can save it- sometimes unfortunately it can cost more to have someone save or move a tree than to chop it up for wood chips. And that's a shame. Hopefully early spring will be good for the roots.