The snow is gone ...

[ChrisGreaves]

Well, at least the snow is gone ...

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Tree Lopping
(signed) "Aching Limbs" of Bonavista

[HansV]

Until the next snow...

Enjoy!

[ChrisGreaves]

Well, at least the snow is gone ...

I am thrilled with my first and possibly last efforts at tree lopping.

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What they looked like a year ago, five to ten feet shorter than this year.

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What I hoped they would look like after trimming

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What they look like this morning. I have not yet lopped the spruce tree on the left-hand side of the image.
The trees on the southern border are obviously alive and blooming, albeit a month or so late this year on account of the near-endless northerly winds.

i may have made a right mess of the trees on the western border, and example of which is at the right-hand side of the image, because i left NO small limbs in place; that is, no twigs with buds.
Hubert and I are now waiting to see if life does, indeed, spring eternal.
Cheers, Chris

[DocAElstein]

Hi Chris, :)
This Tree Lopping of yours is a very nicely documented adventure of yours, Chris, and interesting to read. Great detailed pics :)
I had a similar adventure a few years back. Sadly I made no pictures at that time, but I can add a couple of simple pics from today, to show some of the developments as they stand just now, later.

My Story…
I have a few larger trees, larger ( back then ), than the house which is about 14 meters high, (depending on where you set the 0 meters reference ground level, - which as a result of my never ending building activities can have a tolerance of +2m / -5m, - in other words there are a lot of heaps of soil and quite a few very deep holes and trenches…..)

So a few years back I hit an important intersection junction point in my life :
_ The trees were getting taller
_ The storms were getting worse
_ I was getting older and starting to notice…
The conclusion from this was that either I cut back these trees drastically now ( then ), or I was never going to do it, and nature was going to do it for me, and based on the typical predominant wind direction of the storms, they would likely find there way laying across the main road that runs along one side of the property.
My method was not unlike yours, Chris. At least in some ways. Those thick wood helpers of yours were replaced by one very thick helper wife pulling on the rope with all her strength and weight, situated approximately where the top of the tree should fall. ( Standing in a temporary building shack, with a roof strengthened with some planks for the occasion, - ( a mistake as it turned out, :( ) )
I summed the last of all my bravery and strength to climb up the trees and tied the rope as high up as I could, then with the biggest ladder I have, climbed up, held on with my right hand for dear life and with the left hand cut into the tree with a small modified*** electric chain saw.
It took a lot of physical effort, I was overdoing it a bit, but purposely: My left shoulder tendon was going to be operated on a month later, and according to the operating Doctor, I couldn’t make it any worse by doing anything strenuous, so I though I would make best use of the old one(s), tear it(them) a bit more if necessary, before it(they) got renewed or tacked back on or whatever he did.
It was not quite as difficult as it sounds, but a lot , lot more dangerous than it already sounds. ( I find I get more brave with age, - I guess that’s normal, - I am happy to take more risks, ( provided I only endanger my life and no one else’s) ).
It was not as difficult as it sounds, as I have one modified electric chain saw for such occasions, ( *** https://i.postimg.cc/ZRnbRV4n/Stripped- ... in-Saw.jpg ) – I stripped out all the safety mechanisms and switches, as well as stripping out or bypassing almost everything else to make it lighter and easier to use – I dip the chain in a bucket of old engine oil, plug it in, and away you go,… as quickly as you can – In an emergency, drop it and just hope it doesn’t saw through anything important as it falls.

_.____

So the new stuff,…. to introduce some ideas what you can do after the event…
I discovered that tree branches are very obliging in growing where you encourage them to do with a lot of physical force, and surprisingly quite quickly, if you keep the pressure ( or rather tension ) on them. Two successes I have with that just now.

_ 1 One tree was not so big and appeared to grow quite slowly, compared to most. It was close to a 40m long fence at the front where I have struggled for many years in vain to get any sort of bushes, small trees or similar to grow to help hide me.
So I stretched one small thin branch and kept it under tension in a horizontal direction along and just behind and above the fence. In a few years that single branch has grown horizontal 8 meters, which is much longer then the tree is now tall, and at first glance it looks like a bush behind the fence, which is the effect I had struggled in vain to get by conventional techniques for about 20 years.
https://i.postimg.cc/qBPcXKPz/Branch-as-hedge.jpg

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( With the rest of that tree I am using a similar technique to get it to hide a strong old camouflage colour painted scaffolding, which I intend to use as a Watch Tower, to shoot from the next time the local building authorities try to inspect my activities – Englishman’s Castle and all that https://i.postimg.cc/KY8tvDMs/Watch-Tower.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/445357FX/Big-thick ... ulleys.jpg )




_ 2 I have a naïve simple knowledge of trees: There are only two main tree sorts in the world as I see it:
_(i) Ones that have thin leaves that stay there green for ever and mostly grow tall and thin.
and
_(ii) The other sort of tree in the world has leaves that fall off and keep me busy over a month sweeping them up. They grow predominantly upwards but often branch out in random directions, especially by me where they have to navigate around a lot of my projects and activities. Sadly my wife saw things differently, claiming one particular tree sort that has always obligingly sprang up everywhere was a weed, and she usually killed them off if she could. 1 did survive her ( or 2 if you include me ). It grew quickly and I removed all but the branches going predominantly upwards. Last year I stretched one thin branch horizontally in one direction and another in the opposite horizontal direction. They are both obligingly doing as I want: One will meet another “weed tree” branch and form a nice natural entrance frame from which to hang something, - I have not decided what yet. The other is going off nicely towards the Turkish neighbour’s property, and when it gets there he has agreed to hang on one of the entrails from his very successful vine plants, that dominates his very small front garden, the leaves from which his wife wraps interesting food things in. ( The head of the family is a very nice chap I get on very well with, but in practical things he is mostly a total idiot, so I do lots for him and get paid in interesting Turkish food… )
https://i.postimg.cc/cLmQSbrn/Branch-ou ... ntally.jpg

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So one idea to consider to get things looking as you want, Chris, is to encourage the branches of those trees to grow horizontally into each other ….

Alan

[ChrisGreaves]

Well, at least the snow is gone ...

Still and all, I lament for the poor folks in southern Queensland:-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-05/qld-cold-weather-bom-brisbane-rain-/101210796
Here in mid-summer it is 15c as I type at 10:00 local time, and could even rise by a couple of degrees before the day is out ...
I shall don a sweater and barbecue a pork steak for supper tonight.
(signed) "Grateful" of Bonavista.

[BobH]

Do I understand correctly that Brisbane's record low temperature is about 43°F, or did I get the conversion wrong?

If, indeed, that is correct, what might their record high temperature be? (in terms that I can understand)

The flooding in NSW is awful. I read that Sydney recorded 39 inches (a meter?) of rain in a 24 hour period and that another part of NSW recorded 59 inches (~1.5 meters). Knowing very little about geographic contouring in Oz, I wonder if there is sufficient elevation change to get the excess drained. Being at sea level, I can't see how the flooding won't last for days.

[ChrisGreaves]

Do I understand correctly that Brisbane's record low temperature is about 43°F, or did I get the conversion wrong?

12.4 C
22.32 when multiplied by 180/100
54.32 F when the base of 32 F is added in.

To my mind, 54F in mid-winter (southern hemisphere) is hardly body-killing, even though "Generally, temperatures have been eight to 12 degrees below average."
As was mentioned in these forums within the past month or two, Australian houses and clothes are generally on the optimistic side, in the sense that "temperatures will be OK".
You or I, Bob, when faced with a chilly (54F) day will grab a sweater and get on with life, but if you have never needed to don a sweater, there's a chance you don't have one, and unlike me, residents of Brisbane probably have never donned a cotton T-shirt and two fleecy long-sleeved shirts and THEN a sweater under the coat before setting out to the grocery store wearing woolen gloves and wind-proof mittens.


(Below: LATER- Then flooding is caused by many factors, saturated soil being one of them "Your questions answered about why New South Wales is flooding again")

The flooding in NSW is awful. I read that Sydney recorded 39 inches (a meter?) of rain in a 24 hour period and that another part of NSW recorded 59 inches (~1.5 meters). Knowing very little about geographic contouring in Oz, I wonder if there is sufficient elevation change to get the excess drained. Being at sea level, I can't see how the flooding won't last for days.

Flooding anywhere is awful, but 39 or 59 inches in 24 hours seems to me to be some sort of conversion error (as in "Oh, I am supposed to divide by 2.54 cm per inch, not multiply by 2.54?!!???"). Are you able to locate via History in your browser, a reference to the source web page.
Contours always affect flooding; that is why inland Australia (when rain falls) shows vast lakes as far as the eye can see; the water might be only six inches deep, but spreads over miles. On the east side of The Great Dividing Range, water is more likely to be channeled and so you would get raging rivers.
Until you reach Sydney, which is relatively flat.

That said, I have little patience for people who build on river-flats so that they can enjoy boating rides, fishing, and rich loam ("flood-plain silt") for their fruit trees and vegetable gardens, and then complain when they get flooded out.
It's a bit like the folks who bought 10-acre lots in the Adelaide Hills 50 years ago and built their house surrounded by the bush-land trees - and then complained that they got burned out when fire swept across the tree-tops!

Or like me moving to Bonavista and then complaining that the winter dragged on far too long, dropped too much snow, and my power bill is now cresting towards $1,400 per annum :mea culpa:

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For those of you with internet access to Google Earth, find Carnarvon or Shark Bay on the West coast, and then "fly" across the continet eastwards noting the land height above sea-level. From memory it rises rapidly to 1,700 feet and stays like that all the way to the east coast. Bear in mind that Australia is about the same shape and size as the USA, so this flight is like San Francisco to New York.

Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Flooding anywhere is awful, but 39 or 59 inches in 24 hours seems to me to be some sort of conversion error ...

Then: "Rainfall records have been toppled in some Mid North Coast areas, including Taree where 305 millimetres fell in the 24 hours to 9am on Thursday."
305 millimetres is 30.5 centimetres, so 30 cm in twenty-four hours is obviously doable, but 30 inches in 24 hours would be 2.54 times as much rasin.
I suspect that some journalist with a B.A. degree can't convert metric to imperial.
Apart from using toolbar buttons to do a quick Edit-Replace of "cm" with "ins".
"Well, that converts metric to imperial, doesn't it?"

Cheers, Chris
PS. Mind you, it never reigns but it pores. "And in the offices of 10 Downing Street as advisers poured over the results of two recent by-election losses."

[GeoffW]

Those aren't conversion errors. That was the actual rainfall.

We weren't badly affected. There was a lot of rain, but within normal ranges. Though up river, there has been a lot more, and that may affect Newcastle, albeit not my part of Newcastle.

What we're seeing in some parts is what was previously said to be flood prone one in 100 years, has now occurred for some people four times in 18 months. This last time is probably worse because, as was stated in the article Chris posted, the ground is already saturated from previous rain events and the dams full.

[ChrisGreaves]

Those aren't conversion errors. That was the actual rainfall.

... Sydney recorded 39 inches (a meter?) of rain in a 24 hour period and that another part of NSW recorded 59 inches ..,

Thirty nine inches in 24 hours?
Fifty-nine inches in 24 hours?

Seemed awful high to me, but what do I know, right?

I found some weather data at https://farmonlineweather.com.au/region.jsp?list=ds&lt=wzdist&lc=n00&of=of_b&ot=ot_a&subset=a&ug=1&dt=05%2F07%2F2022 which, for the fifth of July said for Horsley Park (35 Km west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge) 178 mm in a 24-hour period which, if Excel2003 and I have done our sums right, comes to about seven inches.

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What am I missing here?
I would love to see an official weather data table, not an interpretation by The Grauniad (or the Gawler "Bunyip") or a multi-coloured chart.

Guiness reports " a record 1,825 mm (71.8 in) of rain fell in 24 hours at Foc-Foc ... on 7–8 January 1966."
Cheers, Chris

[BobH]

Thanks for confirming the amount of rainfall, Geoff!

I got my information from a newspaper article (probably from AP).

Chris, a town just 45 or so miles South of me recorded 36 inches in 24 hours some years back. It was not part of a hurricane system either. During Hurricane Harvey a few years back, I think the Houston area recorded nearly 5 feet of rainfall. That was largely due to the storm moving so slowly across the area.