Another Tree Clean-Up Day

 We keep losing trees. First the ashes due to the Emerald Ash Borer (click here for the most recent professional tree removal) and now the pines. I'm not sure what's happening to the pines. Is it simply climate or have they outlived their usual life? Many approach thirty years old.

In any case, they are dying. On September 26 Mom and I came home from the library to find a pine laying down in the yard (our neighbor tells us it was down earlier that morning). It was a windy day and we had gusts from a cold front passing through.

September 26 

September 26 

 Tom helped on October 1. He removed the branches of the fallen pine while I hauled the debris to the garden for burning.

 We had quite a fire. Luckily it had rained earlier that day (and, in fact, the day before and the day after) so the fire stayed contained within the garden area. In fact, only the straw under the fire burnt.

 Then, on October 8, Bob stopped by and cut not only the trunk of the tree still laying in the yard, but another pine which stood nearby and was dead.

 Bob makes short order of the fallen pine. How efficient a chain saw is.

 He even takes the stump out nearly even with the ground.

 Then he takes down the standing pine, long dead.

 Part-way through he changes the blade.

 It's a fairly quick process ... if you know what you're doing. And Bob does.

 Later the same day, Tom and I carry all the logs to our woodpile and all the branches to a burn pile in the garden. It goes up in flames quickly and produces such a searing heat that the hairs on my arm are singed off, else curled and white. I know I was getting too close a time or two.
 As the weather has been dry and the day fairly windy, we had to watch the fire carefully and keep a hose and other tools handy. The straw that covered the garden burnt a little too well so I hosed it down and prevented further loss.

 I walked back outside at sunset (about 7 pm) and took this shot to the west. It's a new view for us, That open area in the middle was the home of both ashes and both pines. I now have four bur oaks planted in that area and in several decades I suppose it will again be obscured.

 When I went to bed I looked out at the garden and saw one bright orange spot where the fire still smoldered. This morning the stack of ashes is reduced to almost a level white spot.

 And so Pinehaven becomes less wooded with every year.