Beware where you plant your trees. And, builders, beware how close to neighbouring trees you site houses. This has all become very important if, indeed, we are in for the New Weather as brought about, we are told, by the effects of global warming: gales such as we have known in the past only sporadically. Gales, anyway, strong enough to make one household decide that the top layer of a splendid cedar tree (betting seven to ten it's a Lebanon and eight to ten it's a Deodar, says the expert), must come down. Not all, but from ninety odd feet, where the lovely flat top floated engagingly in more or less ordinary Irish-strength winds, but which bent precariously towards a nearby house in recent gales. The tree had divided about 15 feet up, to make things more difficult. The owners wanted some of the lovely cone-rich branches which trailed engagingly on the lawn, kept. And so they were, but a poor substitute to the giant in full fig. The best part of three days it took, with marvellous, but controlled acrobatics by the tree-cutter. You needed strong nerves just to watch him. What the treemen can do 90 feet above the ground beats anything in a circus because they have in their hand that deadly weapon the chain-saw that could lead to nasty accidents in the hands of anything less than the outstanding performer. (How do they learn or is it an inbuilt quality?).
Anyway it's down to about 30 feet. Forgot to say that the tree divides into two just short of that, and so the circles of wood that remain on the ground cannot confirm the tree's age by counting the rings. Nearly one hundred in the divided columns, so what would it be if you could probe the main trunk which measures fifteen feet in circumference at about a foot above the base. Anyway, the place is strewn with rings of cedar wood. The neighbouring dwelling hs a wood stove for which it buys each year beech logs. Enough for years here now, but a warning from the expert in Southern Tree Surgeons: dry cedar may burn well, but it does leave deposits in the chimney. You need more chimney sweeping than with other logs.
But the gap left is still painful. The owners have lost trees in unusual storms (one nearly demolished three people sitting around the fire - a conifer swished down in the big storm of the early 1960s - just parallel to the end of the house where they were sitting). So you see why this cedar had to suffer the indignity of mutilation.