Willow tree trunk cut

Today I finally finished cutting the willow tree trunk on the left side. *whew!* It took two hours of cutting today to finish cutting through the tree. That makes 7 hours total cutting. It is tough when I could only use a hand saw.

My leg is recovered today. From the 4 hours cutting on Saturday my right thigh became numb after I climbed out of the tree. It was odd as my left leg was the one kneeling and leaning against the tree trunk to help stabilize myself. My right foot was crooked in a tree branch and my leg straight. Why the right leg would be numb is strange. My thigh was numb but worked fine. I could not tell any difference in walking or running. I could tell it was numb by how my pant leg felt against my thigh, and also went I touched it with my fingers my skin didn't have full feeling. But finally this morning my leg was back to normal. *whew!*

As you can see from the photos of the stump the left and right cuts do not exactly match. I had to almost overcut from each side before the trunk toppled over. Even then I had to give it a shove to tip over. The cut trunk was almost perfectly balanced to stay upright. I had made the cuts to have the tree fall a certain way - to the SW. A large branch coming out of the top of the trunk curved to the NE and the combination of the cut and branch balanced the tree.

The tree trunk feel exactly where I had planned it. For once this happened correctly. The trunk fell to the SW and landed on my driveway missing the sidewalk to the house. The ground shook.

The ground is no longer frozen so the falling trunk made a hole in one of the driveway's gravel wheel tracks.

The photo doesn't do justice to the hole as you can't tell how deep it is. Trust me, any hole is impressive in a wheel track that has existed since 1940. When it rains water runs down this wheel track to no effect. This wheel track is solid.

The cut trunk is heavy. I could not lift it. When the trunk is laying on the ground the curved branch rises higher than me. The distance from the ground to the tip appears to be over 6 and 1/2 feet high.

I *think* that if the left tree trunk ever fell down it could just reach my house if the trunk fell a certain way. Due to how heavy the small section I cut is, if that had still been on the tree and the tree fell it certainly would have gone right through my house roof and wall. Thankfully the tree trunk is in good shape with no signs of rot or weakness.

With the trunk cut I finished trimming some small dead branches on my way back down the tree and ladder. I am finally done trimming on the left tree trunk. This will make my mother happy as she was concerned I would fall out of the tree.

I do want to trim more on the right tree trunk. That will be a challenge. The top branches are the ones I want to cut. They are way up there. Unlike the left trunk, the ladder doesn't reach high enough where I could climb into the tree to reach the branches. I have a few ideas how I can get up that high, but I don't want to spend too much more time on this tree. While I would like to cut the tree before the sap is running which makes cutting the tree harder, I do have other projects I need to get done this Spring. We'll see if I get to cutting it.

I borrowed Tony's digital camera as I really wanted photos of the cut tree and trunk. And some people have asked for photos of my progress.

Old and new. It is hard to believe the left trunk once grew over the right trunk.

Here is a view of the tree looking to the east.

Here are some of the branches I had cut before this final one:



Here is a view of the right (north) tree trunk. Notice the ladder falls far short of where I need to go.

 

View from under the north branches