Friday, December 5, 2008

Mama Hawthorne's Sycamore Tree.

On Wednesday, at Mama Hawthorne's, I was treated to special entertainment. Her 100 + year old, 75-100 foot tall sycamore tree had died and had to be cut down.
And I'll just tell you now, if you ever need a tree cut down, this is the man to do it.
Greg had actually started on Tuesday, cutting off the side branches. Wednesday morning when I went over to Mama Hawthorne's, he was well up in the sycamore.
This was fascinating to watch.
The treeman carefully tied each limb he was going to cut down.
Then he pulled up on the rope lines, giving directions to his helpers on the ground, taking up the slack.
When he finally cut through the branch, the ropes held it in place, suspending the branch.
Then, he carefully lowered it to the ground.
Here, Greg has tied the branch with the blue ropes in two places.
Then he cuts through between the two tie-offs, and the branch drops exactly where he wanted it to, without knocking him out of the tree.
And the next branch is lowered to the ground.
I was fascinated by the process. You could see the guy approach each branch, quickly figuring out where to tie it off, then cutting through. It was science and art.
The easier logs just got sawed off and dropped to the ground.
Here, he's just happily hanging.
After a while, he took a quick smoke break and rested.
Time for a Sprite, being pulled up on the rope.
I noticed about a dozen or more planes in this flight path. Check out the picture closely. There are two planes in this one.
Notice how many branches are up there in the top.
Here's a better picture so you can see the blue rope tie-offs.
He cuts between the blue tie offs.
And the branch falls exactly where he wants it to.
The branch is lowered to the ground, with two helpers below guiding it.
After about 4 hours, the top of the sycamore has been trimmed down to this.
Notice his intricate system of ropes.
Just enjoy the pictures.
Another smoke break.
Maybe 4 hours later, Greg calls it a day and rappels down.
I quite enjoyed this. It was amazing to watch.

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