Went to bed Saturday night about 11pm, the wind seemed to have steadily increased throughout the evening, and since I hate high winds, didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep. Always worried about trees falling. Wendy doesn’t have that problem, only me. I can’t sleep with all that wind noise, AND that fact I’m constantly listening for thuds. Its quieter downstairs, so I got the airbed and sleeping bag and tried to sleep there. Other than dozing a little, I still couldn’t sleep. Dozing may have been just enough, as I really didn’t feel too awfully tired all day.
Well, 10 minutes after lying down, THUD! Turned on the outside lights and saw our big one on the left side of the driveway uprooted and crossed the drive. Actually, I wasn’t surprised it was the one, but I was surprised that we were having that high a wind now with such nice weather. But the recent snow and rain had probably soaked the ground around that tree so it didn’t find any way of holding tight. That, and the fact the tree base was scarred, damaged long ago probably when the house was built. The rootball was huge and tore up a few chunks of pavement. Not too bad, still no problem to drive in/out.
Wendy got up at 7:30 so I got out of bed too. We both walked around the yard looking for damage, but really the big tree was the only one. There were lots of branches, and the tops of a few alders had broken and fallen, but otherwise not as bad as it sounded to me during the night. After eating breakfast and listening to the weatheradio(NOW it was saying it was windy in the foothills), I got the chainsaw out and proceeded to get this thing out of the way. I made several partial cuts but didn’t know what it was going to do, so I went all the way thru about the middle of the driveway. The rootball settled most of the way back in place with an 8′ section still waiting to be cut. If I finished that cut, the way it was leaning across the driveway it would fall on the pavement and probably do some damage. So I cut beneath it and aimed it for the brush to the right, and got most of the way thru, then pounded in a wedge to put it exactly where I wanted it.
Then I cut the rest of the tree, and we used a chain and the truck to tow the 3 pieces out of the brush and into a position to roll them near the house. After that it was branching some of the tree in the brush, and general cleanup.
After all was said and done, cleaned up it looks pretty good. I won’t have to worry about that tree falling again. And although the center of the tree shows some rot, which also probably contributed to its demise, I’ll probably be able to use the logs for benches or other projects. After the stump settles back down for awhile, I’ll level off the top and Wendy can use it as a planter or something. You’ll also notice below the “face” we had on the tree is now on the “totem pole”.
Now as of 7pm, the forecast is for continued wind advisory thru 4am Monday, hopefully easing after midnite. I’m sure I’ll sleep tonight anyway, I’m exhausted.