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At one time we had an old (by CenTex standards, where ash trees frequently do not live past 40 years) and lovely ash tree shading the entire front yard at the house my mother lived in when she died. In the last 5-10 years, it’s been dying by inches, not helped by the long drought from 2007 to 2013-14. I don’t have a picture of it at its best. We felt the job was too big for us to tackle with a couple of ropes and a small chain saw. This is what it looked like just before the tree removal people arrived this Monday.
That limb hanging down was the most recent collapse, and narrowly missed the house. The tree was in position to damage the house (with its still not-completed roof) or the neighbor’s driveway (or a car or person in it) or the street, or anyone in that front yard or driveway.
Well before the end of the day, we had this instead:
For more pictures and commentary, visit my LiveJournal. I tried to put more pictures in here, but had some formatting problems. I spent most of the day in the study, but darted out at intervals to take pictures of the process.
Comment by Nadine Bowlus — November 17, 2015 @ 6:42 pm
It is certainly interesting to watch the foresters at work live. As HOA Pres, I manage a 9 acre forested property. We just completed a three-year project to create a “shaded fuel break”.
All done when a large, aggressive wildfire got started northeast of us in October. Stopped 5 air miles from us, so our fuel break not tested, thankfully.
Comment by Iphinome — November 17, 2015 @ 10:57 pm
Found on file770 I thought your ladyship might find this interesting after the talk about humodification
http://www.coroflot.com/kaylenek/PROSTHETIC-ARM
Comment by elizabeth — November 17, 2015 @ 11:26 pm
Nadine: Wildfires are always scary, and five miles can seem like nothing when it’s hot & dry enough.
Iphinome: Interesting. I’ve been thinking about seeing if I could add another (prosthetic) limb to my presently functioning ones and learn to control it, just for the challenge of it. (E.g. one of those that controls by responding to nerve signals.) And of course I wanted to try a tentacle…though, having been to DragonCon, I was thinking of one of the more realistic tentacle types of things I’ve seen in the high-level costuming there.
I would have to learn a heckuva lot about both robotics & prosthetics (I do keep up some on the latter, to the extent I can find shows on PBS and videos online.)
Comment by Iphinome — November 17, 2015 @ 11:51 pm
Lady Moon. People elsewhere are suggesting prehensile tails. Conveniently, the human body does come with legacy hardware to support the structure.
Comment by elizabeth — November 18, 2015 @ 12:24 am
We have the legacy hardware in a minimal state and one easily injured by what’s happened in one’s earlier life (in terms of retrofitting a prosthesis…some of us have pretty much crunched the appendage or the relevant nerves doing things like having accidents riding horses over fences.) Besides, I want to keep riding a bike and a horse, and both would be more difficult with a tail.
I would find a duplicate forearm tentacle particularly useful for several activities–or I think I would. Of course, a new set of eyes with somewhat different properties would also be nice. I’d like to have bird or insect vision–into the near infrared and near ultraviolet, to see all the other colors. But mostly for “zoom” type vision. I’ve had imperfect vision (even with serious correction) most of my life and the ability to have the kind of optics that instruments give me would be a great joy. If I had a tail, I’m not at all sure I’d go for prehensile, but rather the balancing effect of a cheetah or tiger or kangaroo tail. (But again–I need to sit in chairs, and on bike and horse saddles. I imagine difficulties.)
Comment by Annabel Smyth — November 18, 2015 @ 10:14 am
Right this minute, I’d settle for a throat that didn’t feel like someone had climbed in there and rubbed it with sandpaper. Hard.
Comment by elizabeth — November 18, 2015 @ 2:53 pm
Owie! So sorry–that’s particularly miserable. I hope it eases soon.
Comment by Jonathan Schor — November 19, 2015 @ 2:00 pm
Did you save some of the wood to make into souvenirs of the tree?
Comment by elizabeth — November 19, 2015 @ 2:53 pm
No.
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 26, 2015 @ 6:04 am
Happy Thanksgiving Elizabeth!
Thank you for hosting us all here.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Thanks for making this such a wonderful community.