Remember those “spot the difference” picture challenges where you looked at two nearly identical pictures and figured out the difference between them?
Can you spot the difference in the picture on the left versus the right below? (besides the vast difference in the amount of sunlight in the first photo)
I took these photos minutes apart from one another last night while Steven and I were outside watching a crazy storm come in (I was on the balcony, he was in the yard).
The trees were swaying so much, it was creeping me out. I shouted at Steven, “Look at how much the trees are moving! They look like they’re gonna snap!”
Sigh.
Within a minute of saying that, we heard a loud crack, and the tallest, widest tree in our yard came down (the same one that lost a huge branch May 22).
You can’t tell the size of the tree from the photo above, but two people could wrap their arms around the trunk of it, and their fingertips would just touch. It was massive. Now our yard looks all funky with it gone. We’re both really sad we lost it, but grateful it fell in to the woods, and not so much in the yard (it did take down a few of our invasive species, the buckthorn, which we are completely fine with!) or near the house!
Our neighbors were outside and could hear it fall and called us right away to make sure we were okay and it didn’t hit the house, which I thought was really sweet!
I wish I could get closer to the trunk now to share a photo of it, but you can only access this tree from late fall through early spring. There’s too much brush around it now!
I hope we don’t lose any more this summer. Our ground is so saturated, all it takes is some strong wind to knock over these old unhealthy trees.
Will you have to remove the fallen tree? Can you let it sit there and eventually break down? (That seems like it would take awhile.) Have you been planting any new trees?
Did you get the “Mini Page” in the newspaper? It always had the “Spot the Difference” panel, and it always struck me as weird differences, like someone had six fingers or the bird had an ice cream cone for a beak.
We’ll definitely cut up what fell in the fall when we can get to it! I bet we’ll leave the stump. I think it would take forever for it to break down!
We haven’t planted anything new! We are still clearing out buckthorn. Eyeroll (at the buckthorn).
We didn’t! But I recall seeing weirdo things like that. I wonder if they make whole books of those like they do with crosswords and Sudoku.
RIP Tree 🙁
Hate that you guys lost such a big one! What a bummer. But glad you and the casa is safe!
I am glad for that too. It would have been annoying to spend this upcoming hot weekend cutting that bad boy up out of the yard.
Much better to have it fall in the woods than on your house! The tree must not have been in very good shape, if it randomly lost that big branch a month ago and then came down in the storm (not that a tree has to be in bad shape to fall during a storm, but the branch situation makes it sound like something must’ve been wrong with it to begin with.) Now it can become a nurse log – just hopefully not for any more buckthorn!
Totally. And it was definitely in bad shape – quite a few on our property are! We marked them a few winters ago and take care of what we can before the brush gets too bad!
Interestingly, this one was a cottonwood. We had no idea until it fell and we saw the little cotton balls (*did not look up technical term) on it!
Thank goodness it fell in a safe spot! We also had a tree fall down this spring – and it ended up leaning on another tree.
Totally! Now I am looking at the other tall trees in our yard feeling worried! They look healthier though.
Did you leave it as is?
No, we had our tree guy come and take it down safely, as well as take down another dead tree and thin out some things that had gotten too big for their location. He is going to come back in the fall to take down a big birch that has gotten way too tall and poses a risk of falling, too. We decided to wait til the fall because there were a lot of birds nesting in that tree.
I live in fear of that loud crack sound what with our big oaks – I’m sorry you lost such a beautiful tree but so relieved that it didn’t damage your property.
I hope it doesn’t happen to you!!!!
Thanks, me too!
That is so scary! And so sad for such an old tree to fall. But I’m glad it didn’t fall on your house and everyone is ok! What a crazy thing to happen.
It was so crazy that we were both out there to see it! Total cat making home alone face emoji!