Posts Tagged ‘dead tree’
Snag Down
The inevitable has occurred and the snag we left standing inside the small paddock after cutting back the dead limbs almost five years ago has now fallen to the ground.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It had a good run as a scratching post. After the recent discovery that it had been pushed into a noticeable lean by horses rubbing against it, I did some pushing of my own to assess the status of its integrity. It was still too solid for me to be able to push the rest of the way over, but it did move back into a fully upright position, so I left it.
Yesterday morning, Cyndie found it looking like this:
Over text messages, we discussed what to do with it. She said it is too heavy to move without dragging with the tractor or sawing into pieces. I suggested we could leave it in place for a while to provide a little intrigue for the horses to investigate.
We don’t know which horse might have been responsible for knocking it over or whether others were in the vicinity at the time. None of them showed any signs of having suffered a close encounter with falling tree trunks. I’m wondering if they might enjoy gnawing on it a little bit.
It looks kinda cool lying there. I like the thought of the horses adapting to something new happening in their midst, adjusting to the change, and hopefully exploring the interesting shaped object now on the ground.
Cyndie spotted Swings and Mix doing just that later in the day.
I did a visual scan for future comparison to observe whether they take an interest in chewing on it. If they soon appear to be ignoring it, we will likely cut it up and split the logs for firewood before the whole thing rots.
As my good friend, Steve Reynolds has been know to declare, standing dead trees are just verticle firewood storage. Now that it’s no longer standing, I best not neglect it for too long.
.
.
Like This
It’s like this every year. The forest is constantly changing, but it becomes apparent suddenly all at once. It’s not as thick as it was before. Sightlines start to open up. It becomes easier to see deeper into our woods and I discover new and interesting spectacles.
This dead tree had sloughed its bark, but a vine prevented the old skin from dropping all the way to the ground, creating an eye-catching visual.
It’s also like this when deciding to go outside on a day of varying weather conditions. Our sky was a mix of sun and clouds yesterday, resulting in dramatic swings between cheery and gloomy. When I finally rallied to head outside to get something productive accomplished, the air was suddenly wet with waves of heavy mist.
My timing was off by about ten minutes. As fast as that precipitation arrived, it departed.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Those two views were taken at the same time, first looking east, then turning around to the west.
The swings of dreariness messed with my motivation, such that I ended up puttering the day away nipping at the edges of doing something significant, but never really making much progress to speak of.
Some days, that’s just what it’s like around here.
At least it’s a beautiful place to be when not getting all that much done.
.
.
High Balance
It has been a while since I cleared out the pine trees that died in the last year, leaving 6 or 7 feet of trunk standing from one of them, in hopes of creating a balancing rock sculpture on top of it.
Yesterday, I got my chance.
I hadn’t set out to accomplish that when I started the day, but activity has a way of evolving here, if you let yourself go with the flow.
I was trimming the growth beneath our fence line along the perimeter of the hay-field, and decided it would be worth getting the tractor to cut some of the areas of tall grass left after George cut the field for hay.
While out there mowing, I took advantage of the opportunity to move out some large rocks that had been left in a corner of the field last fall by the crew we hired to fence in the back pasture. I had wanted to get that done before the field was mowed, but this was the next best time to do it, with all the grass now short.
The first set of rocks I picked up were smaller than the one in this picture, so on a whim I decided to drive up and see if I could maneuver the tractor in place and roll one onto the waiting tree trunk.
Despite a few precarious moments, including one where the small rock tipped over in a breeze just as Cyndie had bent over pulling some weeds so I had to startle her with a warning, the process worked as I had envisioned.
I put the small rock back up, in a more secure position, and we now have the tallest installation of curiously placed rocks that I have ever done.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 