A significant fraction of the state was hit with major storms on Friday or Friday night.?ÿ Power company workers are still working.?ÿ The town where Mrs. Cow teaches took a direct hit.?ÿ Many trees are now both trees and stumps.?ÿ The tree portion is spread out across the yard/vehicle/house/garage/Sheryl's She Shed.?ÿ The root ball and the main trunk is somewhere between 40 and 90 degrees from straight up.?ÿ It was sad to note such a really big tree went down in the nearby cemetery.?ÿ It landed on numerous headstones.?ÿ I was surprised to see that great-great granny was NOT hanging from the roots where they had overlapped an old grave based on the position of the headstone.?ÿ The school property lost two very big trees and one of the four light poles serving the football field.?ÿ By some miracle, that pole and the lights barely missed hitting one end of the bleachers and a school bus.?ÿ A couple of the light fixtures stopped bouncing about 80 feet from top (now end) of the pole.?ÿ Missed the bus by no more than two feet.
We were much more fortunate here.?ÿ I lost a cottonwood tree that was probably a sapling when the Government surveyors rolled by in 1865.?ÿ A second one of similar size about 20 feet away is still standing, though.
I??m glad that SurveyorConnectors enjoyed learning about pollarding. Seeing old, pollarded trees is something I??ve enjoyed when traveling in Europe. Other interesting European pruning and training techniques include coppicing (and see related term ??copse?) and espalier.
@bill-c?ÿ
The early settlers in my region started hedge nurseries.?ÿ Not your typical ornamental hedge but the Osage Orange tree.?ÿ These were then installed along property lines.?ÿ I have been told the original plan was do something similar to the pollard practice.?ÿ First any branches starting out lower were to be left alone and any new sprouts were to be bent downward to form an impenetrable, thorny, natural fence.?ÿ Apparently, the pruning and training practice disappeared over time.
@holy-cow I think I've read about Osage Orange here on SurveyorConnect in the past. Interesting about the hedges.
There's a variant of espalier known as Belgian fence.
@bill-c?ÿ
The term orange had a double usage as the fruit/seed ball is a bit reminiscent of a green orange and the roots are bright orange when unearthed with their papery look on the outer layers.?ÿ The hedge balls can be deadly to foraging animals as they are difficult to chew and quite sticky once punctured.?ÿ it is not uncommon to loose a calf or cow to a hedge ball stuck in the back of the mouth area creating enough blockage of the windpipe to cause death.
