14 February 2020

The felling

I just got a call from Walt. He has landed at CDG airport and now has to wait 2½ hours before his train leaves for the Tours TGV station. I'll go pick him up there just before noon. We should be back at home for our chapon au vin lunch by about one p.m. Walt thinks his suitcase might not have made the connection at Washington Dulles airport, but he made it. Just barely, he said.

I was surprised the tree felling actually happened yesterday, because the weather in the morning was horrible. We had strong, gusty winds, wind-driven rain, and just general meteorological misery. Then the clouds blew away at about 12:30 and the sun came out. Shortly thereafter, the landscaping crew showed up. There were several gusty showers over the course of the afternoon, but they just worked through them. I did this post as a slideshow because I can show all 10 pictures I want to show and it will take you only a couple of minutes to view them.



The first images show the sapin bleu (blue spruce?) tree in our back yard as it looked in the summer of 2003, when we came to live here, and again yesterday morning. You can see the tree was moribund. Only looking at old pictures made us realize what a sorry state it was in. We've always thought that it was too close to the house, and too close to the huge green deodar cedar right behind it in my photos.

The guy in the red helmet was amazing. He quickly cut off some lower branches with his little chainsaw and in a minute or two he was, I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 feet off the ground cutting the upper branches. Once there was nothing left standing but the tall, straight trunk, he tied a rope around the top of the it and the other three crew members stood a trunk-length away holding it taut. The red-helmet guy sawed through the trunk at its base and the other men pulled it down so that it landed just where they wanted it to land. It felt almost like an earthquake when it hit the ground.

Then the cleanup began. All the branches were hauled out through the back gate and run through a chipper towed behind a truck. The trunk was cut into thick disks that were thrown into a second truck. By 6 p.m., everything was cleaned up. All the while, I stayed in the house, standing at the windows and taking photos.

15 comments:

  1. Blue Spruce do not usually have long lives. My parents spent a small fortune trying to prolong the lives of theirs, to now avail....How good to know that Walt is safely on the ground in France. Enjoy your lunch!

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    1. That's good information. The trip over to and back from the TGV station was easy. The weather is nice today.

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  2. You will leave the stump there? Does no harm.

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    1. Yeah, we'll have to live with the stump. I'll set a big potted plant on it for the summer.

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  3. All good news! (Well, except for maybe Walt's suitcase :) ).

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  4. I never like seeing a tree felled; however, sometimes there's no way around it, and it looks as if that were the case here. I'm glad for you that's it's gone now. Didn't you want to keep the wood for the stove? Im hoping Walt is back home now, safe and sound. I bet Bertie and Tasha were glad to see him, too! Did you enjoy the coq au vin?

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    1. The coq au vin was good. We spent the afternoon talking about W's trip and the people he saw, most of whom I know. Sorry about that tree, but it was ready and needed to go.

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  5. Felling a tree is a fascinating event to watch. Welcome home, Walt!

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  6. Bonjour Walt! I grew up with a blue spruce like the first photo in the back yard of my Kentucky home. When they are healthy they are so pretty. I doubt if it is still there, but I assume the many maples are. I need to go have a look someday. I got to know those trees.

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    1. It was sad in October to see that my mother's pecan tree, which she planted in the 1970s, had died. There's a French song by Georges Brassens called Auprès de mon arbre that's relevant here. In it he writes: Auprès de mon arbre, je vivais heureux, je n'aurais jamais dû le quitter des yeux...

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  7. Happy Valentine's to Ken and Walt and chm and all the lovely readers here. That is quite a change in appearance of the spruce from when you moved in until now!

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    1. Thanks D. As for the spruce, it wasn't completely dead, but there just a few branches with green needles on them, all up at the top of the tree. I'm glad the deodar cedar seems to be doing well.

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