Thursday, March 21, 2013

Sorry, Old Cherry Tree

We didn't have one of our better days today; we got barely anything done. Tomorrow we have an appointment to go plane the wood. This afternoon I did manage to scan all the cut pieces with our little wizard metal detector so we'd be ready to go plane. (I'm excited I sold the Silent Paint Remover today, so now we have some cash to fund our shop time tomorrow.)

I actually had been hoping to go cut some more wood pieces for our basement project, but with our weird weather today and our lack of motivation, we didn't have the energy to go unbury the saw and dig through the huge pile o' fir. I'm really hoping the planing session will go well and we'll be able to go back with another pile in a few weeks. 

We've also started getting quotes to remove our diseased cherry tree in the backyard. It's a little tragic, because it's a huge tree and Shasta loves to jump up into it, but it is half dead and continues to die back.
Shasta's favorite place to hunt squirrels
The huge branch on the right is totally dead (no green at all)
And the trunk isn't in great shape either. 
We've been procrastinating on this one because it was a fine old tree, but if we're going to build a coop down there we need to deal with the danger of dropping limbs. So sad. I wish we could save it, but it's probably better if we just take it out and get a new tree started in its place as soon as possible.

We'll probably leave a large piece of the trunk lying in the backyard to make a "nurse log." It will slowly decompose and create habitat for beneficial insects—and ferns (my favorite).

2 comments:

  1. I like the idea of using some of the tree as a nurse log. It will be pretty and natural - and if won't cost you money to have it removed!

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  2. I wonder from the shape if you can get some knobs and burls of wood from that tree that things can be made out of. Don't ask me what kind of things, but that twisty trunk fascinates me.

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