Daninvan
ArboristSite Operative
Down at the beach again today. Had arranged last week for some friends to join me to day for a small millingfest. I was worried about the weather, the past several days had kind of been somewhere between foul and vile, with downpours of rain, lots of unfriendly cloud, hail, wind, etc. So when this morning dawned clear and sunny, although a bit chilly, it was good news for milling.
There was some snow on the local mountains over the weekend, it melted off a bit since it fell, but there was a very distinct line at around 2000 feet or so where the snow started.
Vancouver has thousands of Japanese cherry trees that have been planted over the last 75 years or so. They grow quite quickly here with all the rain we have, and many streets will be blocks and blocks of fluffy pink or white cherry blossoms in the spring. Here is a picture I took almost ten years ago of a couple really nice examples. The trunks on these two are a bit wider than most, and they are putting on a nice display of flowers.
It appears that someone cut down a small forest of cherry trees recently, at least 5 of them appeared at the log dump early this week. A real shame since they are so beautiful. We had a go at three of them.
It's a bit hard to tell, but these flowering cherries are in fact grafted. The branches are all sterile flowering types of cherry that are grafted onto a non-flowering (or at least a non-showy flowering) trunk when they are young. In this shot, the grafted branches are to the right and the trunk to the left. You can see the graft line, just below the branches.
So we had two mills going. I had expected a friend to bring another but he fell ill and was not able to join us. I had a lot of trouble with the clutch slipping on my Husky 2100, luckily I had a spare powerhead that I had brought along and was able to press into service. So it all worked out fine in the end. As I explained to the group, milling is about 90% set up and fiddling, and about 10% actual cutting!
Unfortunately the log on the right turned out to be quite rotten in the middle, so we only got one more slab out of it. Still, my friends went home with about 8 or 10 cherry slabs in all, most were about 2 1/2" thick, a couple were a bit thicker. All in all another successful day!
Shot of the city crew at work, with downtown and the mountains in the background.
Lastly, someone pointed this article out to me, it was in a local free daily that people read on the subway, bus etc. Turns out that some people don't like me chainsawing on the beach! (Sorry about the highlighted words - they are either "chainsaw" or "beach", the search terms I used to find the article on their website.
There was some snow on the local mountains over the weekend, it melted off a bit since it fell, but there was a very distinct line at around 2000 feet or so where the snow started.
Vancouver has thousands of Japanese cherry trees that have been planted over the last 75 years or so. They grow quite quickly here with all the rain we have, and many streets will be blocks and blocks of fluffy pink or white cherry blossoms in the spring. Here is a picture I took almost ten years ago of a couple really nice examples. The trunks on these two are a bit wider than most, and they are putting on a nice display of flowers.
It appears that someone cut down a small forest of cherry trees recently, at least 5 of them appeared at the log dump early this week. A real shame since they are so beautiful. We had a go at three of them.
It's a bit hard to tell, but these flowering cherries are in fact grafted. The branches are all sterile flowering types of cherry that are grafted onto a non-flowering (or at least a non-showy flowering) trunk when they are young. In this shot, the grafted branches are to the right and the trunk to the left. You can see the graft line, just below the branches.
So we had two mills going. I had expected a friend to bring another but he fell ill and was not able to join us. I had a lot of trouble with the clutch slipping on my Husky 2100, luckily I had a spare powerhead that I had brought along and was able to press into service. So it all worked out fine in the end. As I explained to the group, milling is about 90% set up and fiddling, and about 10% actual cutting!
Unfortunately the log on the right turned out to be quite rotten in the middle, so we only got one more slab out of it. Still, my friends went home with about 8 or 10 cherry slabs in all, most were about 2 1/2" thick, a couple were a bit thicker. All in all another successful day!
Shot of the city crew at work, with downtown and the mountains in the background.
Lastly, someone pointed this article out to me, it was in a local free daily that people read on the subway, bus etc. Turns out that some people don't like me chainsawing on the beach! (Sorry about the highlighted words - they are either "chainsaw" or "beach", the search terms I used to find the article on their website.
