That Pesky Tree!

Have you ever seen a tree embed itself into a fence? Well, I have a few of those in my backyard. Apparently nobody who lived in our house prior to us felt that trees do not belong entwined in fences. The house was built in '24, but I am guessing the fence is MUCH younger than that. Somehow several trees were planted, or planted themselves, along the property line and as they grew became entangled in the fence. One of these trees is quite the monstrosity. it is not a huge tree, but it is persistent. I cut all of the greenery off of it the summer after we bought the house, which would have been 2002. I cut it all off again in the summers of '03 and '04. Last summer I left the stupid thing to its own devises, and this year apparently the neighbor was tired of it and cut all the greens off and many of the branches that had grown fairly large in only 2 years time. I told him that I would work on getting as much of it out of the fence as I could, then I'd try to figure out how to "help" the speed of the rotting process.













The tree on the far left in this picture is the offending tree. The top of it had been cut off before we bought the house, but the darn thing kept growing! The very dead tree stump in the center of this picture is also entwined in the fence. The bottom of it is mostly rotted away, but the section in the picture is home to many ants and other creepy crawlies.













In this picture, all that greenery behind the puppy is from the nasty tree. This was taken in June of this year.

So off on a slight tangent, the other day it was kind of nice out, in that it was not raining. I went out to mow the lawn one last time before winter spreads its beautiful blanket over us. It was about 50 degrees, but I had on a sweatshirt and I was, after all, walking in circles, so I was plenty warm. Kyle was in back cleaning up papers and stuff that had blown into the yard with the autumn "breezes" we have been having. Well, Sarah decided that she too needed to help. She began sweeping the grass off the sidewalks, when Erin appeared, claiming that she too wanted to help. Truly, both girls just wanted an excuse to be outside... Erin had been given a job indoors which had been abandoned as soon as I went out. I sent her back inside to finish and sent Sarah in to get a jacket. Sarah was back out and sweeping in about a minute, and maybe two minutes later, Erin was standing on the sidewalk talking to Sarah, crying her eyes out. I shouted over the mower trying to find out what all the fuss was about and found out we had been locked out! It seems that Miss Erin did not want to get locked out, so she "unlocked" the door on her way through it. I guess it didn't occur to her that I prefer not locking myself out whilw mowing the lawn so the door was already unlocked. Being only 7 she does not really know how to check whether the door is locked or not until she is on the wrong side of it to unlock it.
So, what does one do when locked out of the house for 2 1/2 hours with the temp falling fast???





Cut trees out of the fence, of course! Kyle and I used a hatchet and bow saw and cut much of the offending tree out of the fence. We also got rid of a large chunk of the very dead stump in the fence.


















Kyle so 'enjoys' having HIS picutre taken, that he decided to take mine in some rather unattractive poses!




















So this is what is left of the horrid thing. I think I'll drill holes in it, fill it with fertilizer, wrap it in plastic and let it rot! Perhaps next summer it will rot away. Of course, I imagine that section of fence will need to be replaced since the tree has caused some of it to corrode away.