I Talk to the Trees...

Yesterday, while working in my sewing room, I heard the doorbell ring. Home alone, I knew I would have to be the one to answer it. I was feeling a mite cautious because there were two escaped convicts and I hadn't heard if they left the area or were apprehended again.

I looked through the glass and felt confident to open my door. There stood a nice man from a company named Townsend. He introduced himself and explained that Kentucky Utilities (our electric company) sent him and his crew to cut the top off a big sycamore tree in the empty lot we own next to our home.

We walked out to the lot and he explained they were going to top the tree so the branches would not rest on the power lines when we have ice storms. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Claude and I were concerned about that and thought we might need to hire someone to do it. Now this blessing was right there telling me it was going to be done.

After his explanation and answering what questions I could think of right then, I assured him I would be taking lots of photographs from a safe distance. He went to work, I headed for my camera.

I stopped and called Claude. He and Papa were at the Family History Center. I explained what was happening. His reaction was as happy as mine. He asked if they would get the branches over the phones lines that are lower than the electric lines and on the same poles. I told him I would go talk to the Townsend guy and mention clearing those branches also.

I headed back out with camera in hand and talked to the foreman. He said that would not be a problem and he would be happy to be sure those branches were clear as well.  Yippee!!

Here is the before picture.

Watching these guys work was akin to watching a tree trimming ballet. They were very well choreographed. There were three worker who spoke Spanish and their foreman who spoke a little bit of Spanish. Obviously they had done this many time.

The first worker stood at the base of the tree and put on the spike things that fit around his boots and have leather straps to go up around his legs. I haven't seen those in a long time but as a child I saw them almost every day. When my father was a very young man he worked as a lineman for the telephone company in Louisiana. He climbed those telephone poles using the same apparatus. After he quit doing that and moved into the office of the telephone company, those spikes hung in our garage.

The climber got up the tree quickly and found a spot near the top and fastened his safety harness. The other two workers positioned themselves with one on the grass on this side of the tree and one in the woods on the hill behind the tree. The foreman was on the hill as well.

Then the ballet began.

They sized up where to start and the worker in the tree started his chain saw. This hung from a fastener on his work belt. It wasn't very large but it was a mighty thing and could saw through those branches quite quickly. He lopped off the branches around the top of the tree where he wanted to cut through the top of the trunk.

As he cut of branches, the guys in the woods would grab the end of the branch as it made its way through the branches still on the tree and then pulled the sawed off branch down into the woods. The one on the lawn side had a very long pole with a hook on the end and a cord running the length of it. He used it to help the limbs down if they got stuck in the branches still on the tree. I'm thinking the deer are going to be a mite confused with all the new limbs and leaves over their paths. Then he was ready to cut off the top of the tree.

The man on the ground in the words had a rope the man in the tree had fastened around the top of the trunk. As the man in the tree sawed, the man on the ground pulled on the rope and pretty soon the top came off and fell to the ground. I figured the guy on the ground pulling the rope must be crushed. I asked the man on the yard side of the tree if his friend was okay. He grinned and assured me all was well.

The man in the tree continued to cut off branches and let them fall and the guys on the ground continued to pull them into the woods. The last piece they cut was the front over the phone lines. One big limb there they just tugged on with this pole tool they used until it was below the telephone lines.

Faster than I would have thought, they were all done and heading back to their truck.

And now our sycamore tree looks like this.

And when the ice storm comes this winter, and I'm pretty sure we'll have at least one, we won't be worrying about this tree and its branches breaking the electric and telephone lines. Yeah!!!

After every ice storm you watch those poor crews out trying to cut up fallen trees and cut branches off of electrical wires covered in ice. It just struck me as I watched this process what a less expensive and safer way it is to maintain the electrical lines when the weather is nice. There are several other sycamore trees growing on our hill in that forest and they will eventually fill in and be just as big as this guy was before he was topped. And the foreman assured me they would be back out in about five years to do this again as the trees grow up in our neighborhood.