Storm Debris

Day 39: Yeah, it's going to take a while to get this mess cleaned up, and there's another storm coming in tonight. It shouldn't be as bad as the last one, and maybe it will actually help by bringing down some of the "widow-makers" which are hung up in the branches above me. It was pretty scary listening to these big branches fall in the night. Big Doug (the Douglas-fir at the right edge of the top photo) is right outside my bedroom. He has a girth at eye height of almost 14 feet, and is split about sixty feet up into two "schoolmarms." (The etymology of that bit of argot is -cough- not exactly family-friendly, so I'll leave it to your imaginations.) Either one of them could crush both the house and carport if it came down. I've thought about having Big Doug cut, but he helps block traffic noise and keeps the yard cooler during the summer months. The property to the west of me is wooded, and although the trees aren't as substantial as Big Doug, they're still at least 150 feet tall, and any one of them could also take out the house, but being grouped fairly tightly together, they protect each other from catching the wind. The bottom picture shows the branches which fell from trees which are not on my property. In any event, Doug-firs are pretty resilient insofar as surviving storms are concerned. They are deeply rooted, and although they shed branches, they seldom go completely over. The practice of limbing the lower branches may sound like a good idea, but in fact it is not. Removing the "skirt" eliminates its support for the branches above it, making the upper branches more vulnerable to breakage from wind or the weight of snow. A Doug-fir with a healthy skirt will generally only shed small branches from its upper portion. Big Doug's skirt had been removed before I bought this place. Yep, I have a mess to clean up, and more to come. The up side to all this is that I'll have fun looking for canopy lichens on those branches, and I might even find some kidneys if I'm lucky.