At it again!

By Skeeter Remember the 95 foot tall Oak tree the Saint and our neighbor/friend (Dee) took down in June, due to a lightening strike? (Click HERE to see). The trunk of the thing laid in our Georgia Yard until July 13 when the Saint found the time to cut it into smaller pieces. Sorry for the poor quality of the picture but I was snapping from behind a screened window upstairs.
Here you see the Saint hard at work cutting the massive tree trunk.
Here you see the cut up trunk still in place on July 27 as a spotted fawn comes into the yard to visit. Normally cut up trees in the yard would bother me but with the horrible heat we have had here in Georgia this summer, I did not mind the mess in the yard. I decided it would stay there until we got to it during the cooler days of Fall.
Here is another pile in the woods from another tree (not oak) we cut down way back in June also. With this mess scattered throughout our property, we had planned to cut down more trees this past weekend! We had the tall boom on order to rent for the weekend but around noon on Friday, the Rental store cancelled on us as the customer that currently had the machine, decided to keep it for an additional week. This customer was International Paper and a big client so we understood them canceling on us. They were to keep the machine a week beyond their normal rental contract when we would only be renting it for 2 days. Money does talk with such things...
Being flexible, we opt for "Plan B" and rented a wood splitter instead. This was an older model then we have rented in the past but it did the job and with lower motor noise then the newer model. Amazing how things use to be built in the past. Ha...
We have the wood shed full of oak wood which will smell great burning in our fireplace this winter. Not to mention, keep us warm and lower our gas and electric bills.
Dee (which gave us the free lilies back in spring) helped us split the wood. In return, he got a load of the wood. Plus, the Saint will help him cut down two trees some time this week. He and the Saint split while I loaded his trailer all by myself! Well, they did load about 20 pieces of wood while I was making us lunch!

We still have plenty of split wood after Dee took his share. We are giving some to our wonderful next door neighbor's and what they do not need, we plan to donate to a lady that Dee knows about. She uses wood to 100% heat her house in the winter months. Dee makes custom wood cabinets as a hobby and it was killing him inside to split this oak wood knowing it would be burn in our fireplaces. But since we do not have a $20,000 special piece of equipment or crane to lift the heavy trunk, (in order to process the wood) we had no choice but to use it as firewood. The stuff sure smelled great when splitting it. Sigh...

The process of lightening hitting this oak, us cutting it to the ground and cleaning up, has taken over 3 months to complete! I do believe this is a record yard task for us. We do plan to cut down more trees this coming weekend, if the boom is available. No, we are not glutton's for punishment but know these trees need to come down. They are interfering with the integrity of our asphalt driveway. Cheaper to remove the trees then to redo our long circular driveway. Don't worry, we are not loosing all of our trees. We have several hundred trees on our property so many more to enjoy our privacy and nature...

It has been super hot this year and even though the calendar says it is September, we are still having 90 degree temps. As we worked outside this weekend, it was 95 degrees on both days. Thank goodness for those sport drinks keeping us hydrated! We waited for cooler temps to split the wood but at 95 degrees, we were AT IT AGAIN, In the Garden...

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team,In the Garden

Tree killer

By Skeeter


We had to cut down a huge tree in our Georgia woods recently. The thing was rotting in the top and dropping large limbs on the driveway so time for it to come down. With the assistance of our neighbor and his tractor, he and the Saint got her to the ground. We cleaned up the mess the best we could and the Saint and our neighbor cut the trunk into lengths for firewood.

We rented a Log Splitter and spent one weekend splitting wood for the wood shed. Perfect timing as we had used the last stick of wood this past winter. While splitting the wood, we found the culprit to the trees death. Or what we believe anyway. Click on the video to see this scary thing crawling around.
See how large these creatures are compared to the Saints hands? They were like giant caterpillars that could saw a tree down!
Even out of the wood, their jaws were chomping as if trying to tunnel out of a tree! We plucked at least 100 if not more from the rotting wood. I contacted our County Extension Agent and he informs me these creatures are Sawyer Beetles. They are decomposers and eat dead or dying wood so they did not kill the tree. He says the tree looks to be an Oak and probably died due to the drought.
Here the Saint is busy splitting a small piece of wood from the limbs. Look at the size of the piece which formed the trunk of the tree that he is sitting on. The trunk pieces each made between 40-45 pieces of fire wood! The tree was really hard wood where it was not dying or dead. The Saint and I both worked as a team splitting the large pieces. He had to use the muscles to get the huge piece in place while I worked the levers on the machine. Together we got most of it split. About 6 remain in the woods where it will stay until it dries out a bit more. It was too difficult to split the wet wood while in such large pieces.

Yep, that was one huge tree to get to the ground then to get cut up into firewood.

We traded off splitting the small pieces of wood with the Saint splitting while I loaded my little red wagon and drove to the woodshed and stacked. Then I split and he loaded and stacked. Was a tough job and of course this took place with unexpected humidity in the air. Just our luck...We joke and say, "Yet another thing we can put on a Resume that we would never do for a living" Hard work I tell you and I admire the folks which do this to earn a living!

We stacked the good hard wood 2 rows deep in the wood shed and it should be ready for the fireplace this winter. We also split the rotting wood for easy burning in the outside fire pits. Will make some good campfires on cool nights.

It was probably the drought and not the strange creature that was a TREE KILLER, In the Garden...

Always trying to find the bright side of things, we have a shed full of firewood!