Ash Splint Baskets - Day 2

 Day two of the course was far easier than day one!

Day two was to use the materials we'd prepped to make some baskets!

Tree Karma

My brother is a tree surgeon and he often says about the state of his "tree karma". That is how many trees he cut down compared to how many he's planted or saved.
Mine pretty high as I've planted a lot more than I've cut down but sometimes trees have to go.

Ash growing in the wrong place

The Ash tree in the front garden was one that I marked to come out from the first time we looked at buying the house over 12 months ago. Although it's not massive it's growing too close to the house and it's under the power lines so unfortunately it's got to go.

Spot the Idiot

 Why this came about was today some of my family came to see our daughter, my dad being a typical Alviti couldn't just come and relax.

"Lets take that tree down" He said before even going inside for a coffee.

Not how most families spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon together!

I cut all the higher branches down by hand, up in the tree, as we worked out that the tree was going to be longer than the width of the garden. We only just worked this out as we were just going to fell it in one go (good job I'm more cautious than my father and made him work it out! - He has a friend who once got it out wrong and felled a massive tree straight onto his Daihatsu truck). Some of these high branches we tied a rope to and pulled them as I cut them to keep them from falling towards the power lines.

The king of firewood won't go to waste

The light faded fast so I ended up logging it by floodlight, but at least all I've got to do now is split and stack the wood. I might even use a bit of it for a weird carving I've been asked to do.

As for my tree karma I've got 25 trees to plant when/if it drys up so I'm not too worried!

How's everyones tree karma looking?