Tree felling

What? You aren’t felling the white mulberry? No. Fear not. This is my favourite tree and as precarious as it is, it’s not coming down.

It leans at a dreadful ‘ready to topple’ angle. But that’s mulberries for you. Branches get struck by lightning, or break off. And then they fall and re-root.

This beauty is on the lower terrace below the house.

But there is another one perched over the underground spring in the area I call the Duck Pond garden.

You might be able to glimpse the lovely green in the middle of this drought-stricken mess.  And in this gently sloping area of too many trees.

An ash, two elderflowers, two chestnut. The mulberry.

And one of the chestnuts was distinctly dead.  Were it to fall it would take out the mulberry. So action was required.

Enter house guest Fenning. Everyone needs a forester friend who loves nothing more on his holiday to pick up a chain saw and remove our problem trees.

With Fenning on the noisy end, and David, Gillie and me hauling on the rope at the correct angle, the tree came down and barely a leaf on the mighty mulberry was damaged.

Marvellous.

And as the wood was dead, that means firewood ready to go.  Half to us, half to our neighbour who is always short of the good dry stuff for this winter’s warming fuel.

And for an encore – the dead middle tree at the parking area.

A good morning’s work.