Half An Apple Tree, Half Computer Power
Entry posted by bonesiii
425 views
Did you know it's possible to down an apple tree -- or half of one, at least -- merely by the weight of the apples itself?
It is.
Here's the reasons I have been very inactive in recent weeks:
1) Half of the apple tree in our backyard fell down a few weeks ago. Remember I said I was dogsitting? Exactly one day after the dogs went back home, the tree fell. During that week before it fell, I had spent hours upon hours trimming the low-hanging branches, cutting off tons of weight, and then for hours upon hours upon days more we picked up and branches and apples.
THEN the tree fell, but thankfully in the middle of the day when nobody was out there. Seriously, I came within one day of getting squished by a tree in my own backyard. Yikes. And all that is AFTER I cut off a ton of weight. Yeesh.
Took out my nice shade area under a smaller redbud tree too; took off half that tree's branches.
Pics and stuff. Don't blame me for the awful angle, Ojh took these.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
So then for that whole week we spent hooooouuuurs upon hours, with chainsaw help from our next-door neighbor, who luckily for us cuts down trees all the time, chopping that up, sloooowly hauling away a ton of wood, twigs, and apples.
Then we dogsat (past tense of dogsit?
) the week after that, and still weren't done with the tree. One of the dogs is dying of cancer, and she can't see very well, so we had to guide her around giant piles of sticks outside, etc. The other two dogs are extremely high energy and love to run like bullets, so we had to be careful there too so they wouldn't impale themselves.And while we were at it, the neighbor trimmed the other half that was still standing for us. It's standing at a less precarious angle than the other half, but still not totally stable, and so a ton of the weight, which also hangs over our garage, got removed. Later we removed some that hang over wires. Now what's standing is more like one third an apple tree, heh. So anyways, finally we got all that removed.
What seems to have happened was this: Last year, we had zero apples, because of a late frost. Which was great, because we don't have the time to do all the proper things to keep bugs out, so they all just fall and rot and then we get reeeeally tired of picking them up every summer. But this year when the flowers came out, the whole tree was freaking white, there were so many. We knew it'd be bad, but it was clearly soooo much the weight was too much.
There WAS a storm the previous night, but the tree was still standing then, and it fell when there was no wind, and it was dry. I had noticed while trimming it that that side was hanging waaaay lower than it usually did in apple season, and the trunk seemed to be splitting away from the other half. I hadn't quite put two and two together though -- never heard of a tree bringing itself down lol.
So anyways. Pros: We'll get a lot less apples, at least for several years, now. Cons: We lost our best shade, and had to waste a ton of time on it.
2) This came during the FCG contest entry period, which Ojh and I had already committed to entering. That combined with dogsitting took a lot of time. But:
3) We also lost one of our two networked computers. Usually Ojh will code on the faster one while I do art on the slower one, so we can get work done faster. We lost that capability until the last week of the entry period, so that slowed us down even further.
So our entry took twice as long as we planned. Go figure.
At least we got it done. 
So anyways, that's all over with, unless the other half of the tree feels like falling (those apples are monsters now and still growing).
I plan to get the Expanded Multiverse stuff up and running soon. Not yet sure if the BRC topic or the first main contest will begin first, but the contest is slated for July, which is here. So yeah. Swert and I still have to pin a few things down.
Also, coming soon will be a major announcement related to the Greg Dialogue topic.
--------------THIS ENTRY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:--------------
--------------AND:--------------
--------------SO LIKE, HAVE FUN AND STUFF--------------
--------------AND:--------------
--------------SO LIKE, HAVE FUN AND STUFF--------------
6 Comments
Recommended Comments