Tree
Surgery Necessitated by Hurricane Ike
Three 30-meter trees damaged
by hurricane Ike, plus several smaller ones, were removed on 9/29 &
9/30, 2008.
One of them, by the SW corner of the house, had its trunk split down
near the ground and was creaking ominously in even a light
breeze. It was leaning such that if it had fallen it would
have taken out the family room.
Another large tree, by the SE corner of the house, was damaged less visibly but more severely and
was more dangerous; it was targeting the
bedroom.
The third severely damaged tree, in the SE corner of the plot by the parking pads, had
already had one of its pair of trunks fall, missing two cars by just a
few inches
We had the creaking tree provisionally braced Saturday (we'd discovered it
only Friday) and Monday morning Rick and his crew of five arrived,
Rick having put us ahead of 100s of others, he said, in view of our dire
situation. They came with five trucks; an enormous cherry
picker, a big grinder truck, a receptacle truck, and two others in
support. Lois and I had to work like demons before they got
here to tear out enough of an ancient hedgerow between the garden gate
and the house to let the cherry-picker truck through. Tough going
- the shrubbery, 50-years tough, had woven its way through the
wire fence that was imbedded in it.
The work pictured here occurred on Day Two. Unfortunately I have no
pictures of Day One, when the most
dramatic moments occurred: the cherry-picker at full extension,
Rick way up in the sky,
chain-sawing and
lowering huge, heavy boughs (one dented the roof), the mammoth grinder
spewing a cataract of chips and sawdust into the dump
truck. But even
more impressive was Lois
attacking the hedgerow.
Below are some pictures from Day Two. (The residual damage to the terrain can be seen by clicking HERE).
Click on a thumbnail below
to see the full-size image, then scroll from one to the next:
