Altivo

OMG! What a lovely place you live in! You have a wooden porch in your house, and loads of trees! With the snow it looks like aachallet in Norway.

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I love the trees, but they can be a nuisance too. We have a couple of very large ones that are now dead, and the cost of having them removed is astronomical so there they stand, hopefully not to fall on anyone or anything.

Here's a more appealing view, taken in the autumn of 2000 when we had especially good foliage color.

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Can you not remove them yourself? Just look at which way the tree is leaning. Chainsaw a wedge from the other side (if memory serves). Then cut through the rest, and hope gravity sends it the right way.

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Ah...in Autumn, with a barn like that, it looks more like Northern Germany. Bremen or thereabouts. It's lovely round there.

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Uh, no. Just look again at those photos. Any direction of fall for a 50 foot tree will hit a building or other trees. There is nothing more dangerous than several tons of oak leaning on a single branch of another tree. Those aren't called "widow makers" for nothing. The most worrisome is an oak tree over two feet in diameter at the bottom and some fifty feet or so in height. It's in the middle of the front yard, among a dozen other trees of varying sizes. The other three really dead ones are in woodlot areas where I can stand to just let them fall as they choose, I hope. But they too pose the risk of the "widow maker" that would force us to then hire an expensive service to get them safely dropped to the ground.

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*smirks* From this distance, it's looks pretty :) *turns slightly to get more sun on my back*

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Ah yes. That's a good point. My old man cut down some dead Scots Pine in the grounds of our family home when I was younger, but looking back even that was a bit foolhardy. He nearly took out the utility room.

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Picture of the dead oak in the front of the house.

Additional autumn scenery from 2000.

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There's another risk too, with large trees in a crowded area. You can make all the proper cuts to fell the tree in the desired direction, but when it starts to fall, it will inevitably crash through the tops of adjacent trees. This brings down a rain of broken branches and debris at least. At worst, the spring action of those impacts can cause the heavy trunk of the falling tree to break in the middle and fold ("jack-knife") or to bounce backward across the stump ("recoil") in a very dangerous way.

Unless you are clear cutting (no way!) large trees have to be taken down from above, a branch at a time. This requires a lot of skill and experience, a willingness to climb using ropes and cut off heavy branches that will be lowered using a block and tackle, or, at the very least, a crane or cherry picker to allow safe access to remove the branches from the top down.

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*fights the urge to plant an icy snowball in the middle of that back*

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Very gentle looking. I like the country side. Sadly it's prohibitivly expensive to live in the countryside in the UK

I do not have any pictures of my home (you'd only laugh at it anyway). But here are a few of my county.

Wakefield. My home City
Leeds. The nearby shopping mecca and financial giant.
Chantry Bridge (Wakefield) during the flood.

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*nods* Hence logging being one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. I had no idea it was faught with so many hazards. I do have a habbit of going into things head first, without thinking of the dangers.

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*giggles to myself, then flexes shoulders slightly and puts hands behind head* Mmm, sure is nice and warm here... it's a good thing I don't have to be wary of soeone throwin' snow at me :P

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Hmm. Maybe it's something about British genetics. Our next door neighbor, who came here from England, has repeatedly demonstrated that very tendency. Twice he has cut down large trees himself. the first one he felled with an axe because it was leaning and he was afraid it would block his drive. It certainly blocked the drive then. He had to go buy a chain saw, and it took him three days to get the drive open so his car would fit through again.

You'd think he'd have learned, but no, he took out another one a couple of months later, using the chain saw this time. He was afraid it would fall on the house because it was leaning slightly that way. It did fall on the house, knocking down part of his porch roof.

The man is a total idiot, frankly.

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*hooks up a hose and sprays you with ice water*

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*tenses up, but starts belting out "Singin' in The Rain", complete with impromptu routine*

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You're pretty handy with that camera. It looks like Wakefield has... ummm... grown a bit since The Vicar of Wakefield eh?

I've been in flooding like what you had last year, back when I lived in Michigan. Not much fun, really, but certainly a "diversion" for a while.

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OK, I give in. You win. I can't follow that one.

*hands you the necessary umbrella for the role*

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It's the Scottish gene.

"Do I really HAVE to spend money paying someone else to do something that I can have a crack at myself." :D

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It's not really grown all that much. The industrial revolution missed Wakefield really (unless you count the coal mining industry). Places that were missed by the revolution ended up keeping their medieval street layouts, and medieval population levels (though Wakefield's is SOMEWHAT increased).

Leeds on the other hand went from being a small village of little importance to the 720,000 strong City is today thanks to the industrial revolution.

Did you like the Gypsy ponies? ;)

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LOL. Yup. His name's McHattie. ;p Though I think he and his family came hrer from somewhere near London rather than the north.

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hrrunka

Ugh! I hope that state of extreme sogginess doesn't last too long!

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London? Oh that's it. He's Scottish alright. You can't move for Scots in London. :D

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Yes. I adore gypsy cobs. Did you know that over here they are trademarked and sold for absurd prices?

Goldsmith wrote Vicar in something like 1755, so naturally I can't expect to see the same sleepy rural setting that he described. ;D

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They are dirt cheap here! Hmm...the capitalist in me is getting ideas.

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Typically it doesn't. We seem to be on the breakover point now where it will stop accumulating snow. Temperatures are breaking the freezing point every day. We need some dry wind, though, and for the spring rains to hold off.

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Transporting live horses over the Atlantic and getting them approved for import is not cheap, unfortunately. I understand you can get nice Gypsy ponies for less than a thousand dollars US over there, while the trademarked "Gypsy Vanner" ponies are selling for ten to twenty times that here. But transportation and import licenses for live horses will raise your costs by as much as 500%. The trick is to import a few breeding stock and start multiplying them over here. That takes time and a larger investment. Then you have to be careful to dodge the lawsuits from the Gypsy Vanner folk, who are quite aggressive. Their horses are lovely, at least the ones I've been close enough to touch and converse with, but the owners and marketeers are just eeeww.

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*Moves the wet hair out of my eyes and graciously accepts the gift whilst pretending to step over puddles* Thank you... ya daaaah, dadadadaahhh.... *skips off singing*

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cabcat.livejournal.com

That evil white stuff is still there O.O
Still looks a bit cold and bleak for this cat ;)

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