I think that I Shall Never See a Crane Big Enough to Lift a Tree

That is until the Tree Wranglers showed up this morning.

You may remember the saga of The Tree We Couldn’t Save. That episode just confirmed my belief that trees should be planted or left where they are, not moved. But Andy thinks differently. He didn’t want a spindly little tree to replace the oak that died in front of our barn. He wanted a mature tree — one at least 50 years old. And he didn’t want to wait 50 years to get it. We argued about the ethics of this. I thought I’d won when I found exactly the right quote from a Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

Andy’s response: “The Greeks are idiots.”

So good or bad Mojo aside, today an olive tree arrived on a large flatbed truck.

And the huge crane you see above.

Which they ratchet up so the truck bit isn’t even touching the ground.

Everything is balanced on these huge “feet”.

Then the tree wrangler secures the tree. Hey look at the size of that rootball!

And we have LIFT-OFF!

Swinging it around:

Meanwhile Felix Sr. and Felix Jr. stand by with the crew.

The Felixes are our go-to guys for just about everything. Any fancy stonework you see at Two Terrier Vineyards, those guys did it. They built Lake Charles. They built our amphitheater. When our friends Rob and Susi had their wedding here at TTV, Felix found a Mariachi Band. He was heartbroken that Susi didn’t want him to lead her in to the ceremony on one of his Andalusian horses. (But Susi was only prepared to go just so country.)

Now Louise Leff, our Landscape Architect supervises the arborial landing for exactly the right orientation.

Then the Felixes and their crew move earth faster than you can ever imagine it could be moved.

Thanks guys!

After the drama of replanting a tree, I felt a little guilty thinking about burning a tree. But it’s cold and rainy and the woodstove is the only source of heat here at Chez Terrier. (See yesterday’s post for the whole drama of no wood.)

So I hitched Old Paint to the wagon.

Not really. I took Old Chrome Paint. And Oscar wanted to ride.

Here’s what I found from Felix’s last deadwood cutting exercise.

I should test my theory that wet wood won’t be wet anymore when you throw it in a woodstove. However, if a log is hollow and filled with water, that probably won’t work very well.

But I managed to gather enough to get me through the evening, I hope. Although I’m a little nervous about burning parts of the tree that died in that spot and letting the smoke waft over the newly planted tree. Got to be some bad Tree Mojo in that.