IF A TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST

If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? I’m going to weigh in with my own answer to this age old question: No. I say that because on Sunday we discovered that a very large tree had, in fact, fallen in our woods, not far from our house, and until we tried to walk down our little path in the woods, we had absolutely no idea it had fallen.

It’s a sad loss because it was yet another birch and of the few birches that remain on our property, it was one of the healthier ones. Birches are not long-lived trees in our area and I think most of the birches on our property were planted (or planted themselves) at about the same time, so we’ve been losing them steadily since we bought the house 14 years ago.

It turns out that the rather torrential rain we had last week did it in. I’m not sure how much rain we got but it was certainly a few inches at least over a handful of days. This birch, a naturally shallow-rooted tree, was growing in the woods near the creek and seems to have just toppled over, roots and all. Unfortunately it landed in a younger maple tree where it is currently hung up so we’ll have to do something about that and a some point we’ll take care of the trunk.

Unfortunately it’s hung up in an otherwise healthy maple, so we’ll have to get in there to free it up.

A few big branches fell onto the little path that we mow through the ferns in the woods in order to get to the road to the east of us. The branches are beautiful white ones, perfect for Christmas decorations, but I’m torn between wanting to find a spot to save them and wanting to stick them in the chipper shredder to make some great mulch.

So yep … somehow a big ‘ol tree fell and we had no idea. At least one mystery is solved.