Goodbye, Shade

When I moved here, one of the things I liked best was the woodsy location. The area of the property where the house is located had a lot of big oaks close to both buildings.

Since then, I have reconsidered.

The oaks drop leaves that are like little pieces of leather. They drop tons of them, literally, on the lawn. They kill the grass, but they seem to let weeds through just fine.

The trees rot. Here, whenever you cut an oak more than 10″ thick, you can expect to find a big brown spot in the center of the trunk, if not a hollow area full of giant cockroaches. The trees rot from the inside out, and they die from the tops down. Eventually, big rotten logs start to fall straight down. When a tree gets sufficiently rotten, it snaps and falls over.

The roots of these oaks are amazing, because they don’t hold the trees in place very well, but they are nearly impossible to dislodge after the trees are gone. The trees rot fast when standing, but the stumps seem to last for eternity.

Because the roots aren’t great, you never know when a strong wind will push a tree over.

The people who built this house thought the trees were cute, and they were, but a house with a tree on the roof is less cute, so today a bunch of guys who looked sort of like Vikings came and murdered most of the trees that menaced my house. The rest have a date with the saw tomorrow.

Where I used to live, arborists climbed trees. I used to work for an arborist from time to time, and he would put spikes on his feet and go right up an 80-foot Australian pine and start cutting. It was terrifying to watch. When you’re way up on a tree, and a piece of the trunk weighing 500 pounds falls off, the tree swings back and forth like a spring, and there you are with the trunk a foot from your face.

Also, when the tree snaps as you cut it, you have to be sure you did it right, because when you’re right next to a tree in the process of snapping, lots of bad things can happen. This is especially true if you’re tied to the tree.

Here, I have not seen anyone in a tree. They go up on lifts.

I think it may be because the trees are so treacherous here. The tops are full of rotten wood. If you were to climb one, the motion of your body could make the top snap off and hit you on the way to the ground. You might also anchor yourself to something rotten without knowing it.

The tree guys surprised me. I didn’t see ear protection on any of them, and they were running very big Stihls. None of them wore chainsaw chaps. The only guy who had a helmet was up on the crane, and he was the one dropping logs, not one of the ones dodging them.

I don’t know how they can hear anything after running saws every day for years.

I now have two really large piles of dead oak to burn. They’re not far from the house. I would ordinarily have the wood put in the pasture, but because the machine that moves wood is slow, it would have slowed down the work and cost me money. I’m going to go out and see if I can move one of the piles myself tonight.

The yard looks like someone fought a war in it. The grass here is feeble. If you walk across it three times, it starts to look bad. If there is no rain for 5 days, it turns brown. We have had several dry days. The grass was not ready for a crane, a grapple, and a lift.

I’m going to miss the shade, but it was an unaffordable luxury. We have an insurance crisis here, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a policy next year. I am not going to sit through hurricane season wondering if I’m going to have to build a new house at my own expense.

From now on, I’ll have fewer leaves, the grass will look better, and my house will be in no danger whatsoever from hurricanes. Well worth losing some shade.

The people who built the house should have removed the trash oaks and planted better stuff that would stand up to wind. Now I have to plant that stuff, and I will be dead before it looks good.

I’ll have to poison my new stumps, and later I’ll think about ways to remove them. A rented track loader with a stump bucket sounds good. Or an excavator.

If you build or buy a house, don’t be stupid. Don’t doom it with inappropriate vegetation. It will rob you of peace, and it could squoosh your investment.

Fox’s site says Trump has been found guilty in Alvin Bragg’s kangaroo court. Another big oak nibbled by bugs.