South african wedding tree
It's council green waste collection next week so yesterday I decided to take down a dead South African Wedding Tree in our back yard. This has been on my todo list for about 12 months but I kept justifying not doing it because, well the council aren't collecting yet.
The tree was about 4m high and consists of a very short (400mm) trunk about 300 mm in diameter and then 4 branches ranging from 150 to 200 mm in diameter near the trunk. I was hoping to get some small pieces millable timber out it, well at least the trunk anyway.
There's not much space to work in as its hard up against a fence and there were garden plants other small trees around that I did not want damaged, so my plan was to in turn tie back each branch to another branch and then partially chainsaw through the bottom of the tied branch and then lower it to the ground.
I partially cut through the first branch and then partially loosened the the rope, tugged on the partially cut branch and something snapped at the base of the trunk and the whole tree slowly started to fall over. No big deal I thought were going to lose a few plants but luckily it stopped falling just as the first branches started to touch the small trees, about 1m off he ground. What had happened was a large creeper (up to 1" thick branches ) from the neighbours side had multiply entangled itself in the top of the dead tree. By selectively cutting bits of the creeper I was able to gently lower the tree to the ground and then break it up with the chainsaw.
Unfortunately the trunk was badly rotted (that's why it had snapped) out so nothing worth saving there but I kept a couple of the branches. I was surprised the wind hadn't blown it over before now.
