The beautiful weather of the last two weeks ended with gusts of wind, rain and even hail.
I 'm cleaning a row of London planes in a new to me castle ground.
They are 15 nice tall trees, in the 100' range. The big horizontal limbs reach as far as 50', one or two maybe 65'. Impressive. I love the beeffy trunks (but still elegant) and the beautiful smooth shape of the main crotches.
But, too bad, they are definitively out of my comfort zone.
My 16.6' telescopic pole, essential to me to place my ropes and secondarily to pull the small dead wood, is just too short in these crowns. So, when the bad weather hit, I found that it should be a good idea to NOT be up there. In the 70' hornbeam grewn just under one (my intended access path for this London plane) I had no problem, but I chickened after setting my first temporary TIP in a small crotch of the London plane. The wind pushing away my pole and my rope, the slipery wet bark and the hornbeams leads slamming against the London plane's limb (take care where you put your fingers !), that was a bit too much for my liking.
See you next week!