The Big Tree.
This is relatively old news now. However, it was all fairly traumatic at the time. So, read on and enjoy the tale....
It can't be that often that you'll find a web page dedicated to a single tree. Unless, of course, you know different. If you do, contact us and let us know.
The events described below are now a happily fading memory, takng place over the winter of 2009/ 2010. It was though a fundamental change for the garrden, and one worth leaving on the site for all to see!
The tree in question was an ash tree. When we arrived in Ely in 1976, it was about 18 feet high, and cast welcome shade over part of t
he lawn in the summer. As the years went by, the tree grew bigger and spread further, blocking out summer sun and making the garden seem gloomy from the road. What had kept us cool in the summer made the garden seem dank and wet for the winter.
We had the canopy raised a couple of times, alleviating the problem a little, but not really curing it. We had a near miss in 2005 when a gale made the tree shed about three quarters of a ton of wood, which landed between our two greenhouses, but causing mortal damage to our washing line. The railway escaped unscathed.
The birds loved it, and many crawlie creatures made their home in the canopy. I once found a giant hawk moth caterpillar hanging from it, and, in the last year of its life, a pair of lesser spotted woodpeckers looked the tree over with a view to moving in. (They didn't).
Watching the ease with which the Man In The Tree walked around the tree was fascinating. Gracefully, and not without a certain amount of dignity, the tree faded away. In less than a day, one of the characters of Chapel Street was gone. It was as though someone had taken the roof off of the garden. Even in November, when the leaves had gone, the difference in the light level was really noticeable. The tree though left us with several legacies.
Legacy number one was about ten tons of logs. Big round ones. L
ots of big round ones, all over the grass. I hired an axe, and began to convert them into firewood. Some wood went uncut to neighbours and friends, some cut firewood went other ways, and some, well, we're still burning it. I did give some away to wood turners, and was gratified when the wood turning husband of a friend presented us with two beautifully turned and polished ash vases.
The woodpile disappeared over a few days, leaving the grass dented, and looking rather sorry for itself. There was a nasty looking brown trail cutting across to the arch, through which had come a largish self driven stump grinder. How did the railway fare? Well, I protected the track, and left it to its own devices. For various reasons, we couldn't give it any attention until February 2009, when we found it little affected, proving that good track laying and Peco track can survive most things!
Legacy number two was a little more public. What happens when you cut wood? That's right. You get sawdust. When you get a powered chainsaw with fairly coarse teeth chucking the stuff about, you get lots of sawdust. The area around the tree site itself, including my sheds, looked like it had been covered in some sort of cheap imitation snow. Then I went for a walk down the street. The whole place looked as though some form of industrial dandruff had happened. It took many weeks for it to go away. I still find little collections of sawdust in odd corners.
Legacy number three was a huge mound of shredded tree. Too good to waste, a lorry load was dropped off to mulch a friends arden, while the rest was spread around ours. A not inconsiderable amount stayed where it had been as a mulch on our new and treeless raised bed.
The final legacy was a slightly more strenuous one. Roots. They had been a problem around the sheds, lifting slabs and causing humps and bumps all around. Although the stump grinder dealt with the large stump, the smaller bits were left to us. I spent ages chipping away at the offending lumps, in order to try and level things. I ended up with a large bag of bits, which I vowed to burn personally, and a very neat concrete pad covering a multitude of sins!
The following photos record the event.
This photo and the one below give some idea of the extent of the tree. Quite a mighty thing, it dominated our garden, and this end of Chapel Street.
Work has begun, with the workers already sawing up the logs.
One by one, the three trunks are taken down to the ground, changing the skyline for ever.
Precision and care are the order of the day, as heavy pieces of tree are lowered down.
Finally, we're down to ground level. This has to be extreme weeding!
The stump. The split isn't really. It is two trunks almost welded together. You can just see the damage that it was doing to a waterbutt stand. The picture above left shows how close the tree had got to the shed.
The stump grinder does its stuff. You can see bits of railway trying to hide in the top one. As they might say in films, no shrubs were harmed during the making of this mess!
After they went home!
And here we have Mrs Ellis doing a spot of log tidying, in preparation for me to turn them into firewood. You know, there's something satisfying about splitting logs. Good job really, as there are about eight tons worth here!