Six years
ago we were hit with an ice storm that decimated trees here in the state of
Oklahoma. In our area we were without power for 7 days. After one day without
power and told it would be up to a week before we got hooked up to power again,
we went a bought a generator to power our house. We have not had to use it
again but it is a comfort to know that we have it just in case.
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| The Ole Sycamore |
But I
digress…in the space of six years and two years of severe drought and looking
at a third straight year of drought, we have lost 14 trees out of our yard. In
the neighborhood, our block alone, I would say we have lost 20+ big trees.
Last week
we had our big Sycamore in the front yard taken down. It’s sad to see these
once beautiful trees die. Between ice storms, drought, fungus and parasites
it’s a wonder they even make it to full maturity.
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| She's down! |
I remember
when our girls were small, it was a winter day and they were playing
hide-n-seek around the Sycamore. I filmed it as it was so cute. Ah the memories…
The past
couple of years the Mississippi Kites (5 of them)
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| Cleaning up the mess |
would roost
in it. One night there was a big horned
Owl up there hooting away. In a hollowed out knot-hole a wee bird of some sort
had a nest and in another knot-hole was a wasp nest. It was home to many critters over the years. It kept the house shaded from the hot
Oklahoma summer sun and provided us a cool spot where we could sit and read in
the quiet of twilight. It provided us a limb in which to put up a rope swing
for the girls and was the west soccer goal for a quick pick-up game between the
girls and their dad. Yep I’m going to miss that big old tree.
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| Timber!!! |
Happy
trails…
601 More days till we’re
out there!
I will tell you about an old tree we had. It was the time when we lived n a very large property in Alberta, Canada. We lived in an old house from 1936. It had a roof of asphalt shingles. A couple of large Jack Pines were standing close to the house. They had survived a huge forest fire around 1910. We were always afraid a lightning would lit up these trees which invariably would lead to burning down our house. One year we came back from California. It was in April. One the old Jack Pines had been attacked by a tree porcupine which had stripped off bark all around the tree. We could already see that the tree was dying. A month later I started my chainsaw. There was no other way with it, the tree had to come down. When it fell our eyes filled with tears. I started to cut up the huge trunk. When I got to the really big lower parts I had an idea. maybe we could you this for something other than firewood? I had always had the idea of carving something with a chainsaw. So I made these chunks of the lower end fairly large. After we had cleared all the debris away I started the chainsaw again and carved a 3ft. tall pelican of it. It was painted white, and I left the beak in natural wood. It was beautiful. Why I made a pelican? Because every summer we had a small group of pelicans on the lake.
ReplyDeleteMy husband was born in Drumheller, AB and grew up in Calgary. His sister lives in Nakusp, BC. We still have lots of friends up that way.
ReplyDeleteNice post. A true 'Ode to a Tree.'
ReplyDeleteSo sad to see a tree going down.
ReplyDeleteIt is so sad that we are/have lost so many trees due to the drought. On the bright side our OKC/Norman area has caught up and is back on track. Down in the Sulphur area where the Chickasaw National Recreation Area is up until two weeks ago had only received about 7" and the ponds and Little Niagara in the park were dry. We have arrived this weekend not only to find some of them full but overflowing. Little Niagara is filling up and our lake has come up almost 4' in just two weeks. They had so much hail this week that it looked like piles of snow around Davis when we drove through. Prayers that the drought is over.
ReplyDelete