Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 09/16/18> Business as usual … if there is such a thing.
It isn't a good thing...
I am starting to get into my fall mode and that isn’t a good thing. The fall has sort of a different meaning for me and it is something that I have just learned to live with. The fall of the year is noticeable in most areas where the deciduous trees end up shutting down their systems and the leaves end up changing to all sorts of yellow and reddish colors before ultimately being detached from their limbs and falling to the ground. I guess that is why we refer to it as fall or we can use the proper term of autumn.
I end up falling...
Regardless of whatever you want to call it, this is the time of year when I end up falling behind on stuff I need to take care of outdoors. Last year after the hurricane Harvey I had quite a bit of work to do with tree debris and helping friends who had suffered damage to their homes from the storm. So a few projects got pushed off and didn’t get done and didn’t get done this summer either. I can still take the heat of working outside in the summer; I just can’t take it for as long as I could when I was in my twenties and thirties.
A very large...
May be I didn't...
Anyway, Saturday afternoon I went out and surveyed what I have to tackle this fall. Cutting up this big old fallen oak tree is going to take some time. Not only is it big, there are plenty of vines that had grown up into that tree and two for sure are the wild grapes and the poison oak vines.
Feel myself starting to...
I can almost feel myself starting to itch from that poison oak; it never seems to fail that when I get close to it I end up with a case of it. My guess is that there is probably a good 60 man hours for this old man on getting this old tree cut up and hauled over to the burn pile, yes as much as that might sound like I don’t care about the environment the truth is , I don’t when it comes to burning wood.
Plenty of wood is burned each year in its natural environment from lightning strikes and such so my burning one tree is going to break the ecosystem; if it does then sue me in court.
Had a unique...
Solid as hell...
These growths appear to be actually part of the tree. When I touched them I expected them to be soft and mushy but these were solid as hell. So it seems that for whatever reason the tree decided to spring some type of growth out at the point, almost like a knot would be in wood. After closely looking at them it seems to me that these have been growing for quite some time because they actually grew over a poison oak vine that was running up the tree.
I am going to...
When I do cut this tree up I am going to extract these and examine them further but if anyone has any ideas on what these would be called I would surely like to know as I have never encountered these type growths on a tree.
Reminds me of how...
They seem to coming from what was the live bark at the time the tree fell and were trying to make their way across the dead and rotted portion of the trunk. The one almost reminds of how a snail looks when he is out of his shell and dragging himself somewhere.
Bitching and complaining...
So it will be business as usual this fall cleaning up outside and burning debris and like usual I will be bitching and complaining about the time change and how that screws with my body clock. But having said that, I lately have been finding that I have been screwing with that clock myself, staying up way past my normal times doing this blogging stuff.
Hour or hour and a ...
I used to be able to do all I needed to do in about an hour or hour and a half each evening and now I’m finding myself taking as much as three hours or more to get things done on here. I haven’t adjusted my start time to start earlier and that is what I really need to do.
That adds up...
My body still has the wake up time working like it should but I am noticeably more tired at the end of the day since some days I am only getting four or five hours of sleep instead of the normal six or seven. That adds up on the old guy at the end of the week.
One thing that hasn’t changed any this past week is the boycott, today marks week four.
Ya’ll have a great Sunday.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper
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always you have unique idea, love your post and god bless you and your work ❤
Thank you for the blessings and dropping by, your support and compliment is very much appreciated.
I remember your old Oak and the loss of power. I have no idea what the post might have been called.
I have seen growths like that on oak trees. I got a really full discussion of them in the Nort Woods from my friend Erv, but I can't remember what he called them. He has two oaks in a fairly wet area that have them, he removes a couple every year and takes them to a local medicine man who uses them in some sort of healing ceremony. Now you know everything I know about them...
You might want to cut and section them fairly carefully. I don't know for Oak trees but some of the Coast soft trees get a 'burl' on them that are highly regarded by carvers and bowl makers. The grain right there is probably pretty unique.
Well, solidarity on the boycott. I'm starting to wonder how long this can go on with out any sort of discussion.
Well Tom you know a hell of lot more than I do about those growths than I knew so thanks for that information.
I had thought I had shared the story about the tree and the power outage but I just could not think of the time frame it happened I can remember it was already pretty warm temperature wise because the house got pretty warm through the night without the AC. I just wasn't going to look through every post to get the exact date.
We are surely a climate that is wet so it would make sense that those growths would be on oak trees down here for sure, it is just the first time I have ever noticed any of them.
These aren't very big growths, smaller than a closed fist for a size comparison. I have seen some wood carved burls like you mention in some high end antique type shops. Those can be really beautiful bowls for sure. I doubt that these could be used for anything, but since the kids are part Cherokee Shortie may come up with something to do with them knowing her and her doll house stuff.
As for the boycott, the Mrs. is going to have to resolve that now. Blondie and I are holding firm and since the wife doesn't trust that I won't go off on the minister if I talk to him then she is going to have to get it done if she wants us going back to church with the rest of the family.
I would say that I don't blame the Mrs. for not trusting I wouldn't go off either.
At first I thought the mushroom was chaga, but that is not the right shape for it. Could be be tinder fungus? It kind of looks that way from the picture, but I am not an expert at all!
I think it might be that tinder fungus after going and looking at that link you provided. I read where it attacks trees and causes decay and rot and Lord knows this tree was eaten up with both of those from the ground up.
The only thing I didn't see in the description of the tinder fungus was the "consistency" or the hardness, I always think of fungus as being soft and mushy but this is really hard, almost has the feel and hardness of the wood of the tree.
I will look more closely later today. Thanks for the link, I think you may have nailed it, even if you aren't an expert on this item.
Living in the Sacred Woods Temple at Damanhur, I started to understand that not all fungus is soft. That was a shock to me, as well, since I thought that all mushrooms must be the same. Everything related to fungus is fascinating, I only wish I had more time to study it. It is on my list there somewhere!
I am wondering how long the boycott will last before someone says something about the missing Pappers. We have to seasons when we do a cleanup, the end of the dry season when we need to make sure water will flow away from the homestead during torrential rains in the rainy season and the end of the rainy season when there will be another massive cleanup. We seem to be always hacking back the vegetation.
We have two also fall and spring for cleaning. Summer is mainly grass cutting and weed whacking as well.
I could see people asking about Blondie, because she isn't going to Sunday school classes or any of the youth group stuff, I am just another face in the crowd at church so I would be easy to overlook not being there.
I will have to ask Mrs. Papper when she gets home if anyone is asking about Blondie being missing.
That is one huge oak! A tree that is hard, hard. You will indeed have a big job ahead @sultnpapper. We were hit by hurricane Irma...just last week we finally got the screen cage installed on our lanai...hit by a tornado during the hurricane, more damage. Perhaps your tree was damaged by Harvey but managed to make it until a storm blew through. That looks like a tree that has been there for many years! I bet it was beautiful in the day.
It was a big old tree and it was rotted pretty good at the base and up a good eight feet of the trunk. When the storm that took it down rolled in it was from the opposite direction of Harvey's winds and that was evidently the angle that was needed to snap it off.
It will be a lot of work but at least the weather will be cooler when I tackle it this fall or winter.
Those hurricanes are bad news for sure and spawn bunches of tornadoes. Glad that all it took out was the enclosure and not your house.
I love autumn, but this year it seems to be approaching too fast, after three months of almost solid rain (we did have a week of reasonably sunny weather, but that was right after I sprained my ankle). The one thing about endless rain is that you have to postpone gardening jobs like this. I have masses of "clearing" to do, but nothing as big as that tree. I have no idea how you'd tackle a thing like that.
The attack approach is from the top down, so I will start with the branches, which there are many, and work my way back to the trunk.
Rain can sure be frustrating when it comes days on end.
Thanks for dropping by and I hope your ankle is getting better.
I went to the climbing centre last night for the first time since the sprain. I did a lot more than I'd expected to. It's definitely on the mend :)
That's great news.
howdy sir sultnpapper! hey that's very interesting about that growth stuff on those trees, never heard of anything like that but very interesting none the less.