Life among the Tree Limbs
The time a sideways tree filled my backyard
February 2023 in Central Texas, and the ice storm had passed. The power was finally back on after five days without. Sigh. Now to deal with the aftermath.
[Picture: Tangle of hackberry on my back porch.]
The view out my back window was a tangle of hackberry. Part of the yard to the west was clear, and the far back was spared. Underneath all that were little trees, lantana, and pigeonberry. I didn't know what had survived, or how I would deal with the mess. But there seemed no hurry.
First, I trimmed back the branches that actually intruded onto the back porch. Fortunately, the house suffered minimal damage, only a bent gutter. Eliminating those obstructions helped normalize things. Little by little, I explored the area, trimming as I went. Most of the little trees and other plants had escaped damage. Yay! A minor miracle that so many existing plants were in exactly the right place for these large branches to fall and simply bracket them, like a giant puzzle that put itself together.
[Picture: Split/fallen hackberry tree.]
Then spring came, and lo and behold, this thing was alive! It turns out nobody told the hackberry it was supposed to be dead. Sideways limbs put out leaf buds as if they were standing tall. Part of the fallen trunk was still attached to the base trunk, enough for the fallen part to flourish. Apparently, this is a thing with hackberries. Walking around the neighborhood, I saw other hackberries also stubbornly budding from horizontal trunks.
When the tree fully leafed out, it was an amazing sight, almost like a theme park world. I picked my way through the branches into the center, to stand fully immersed in tree. Inside that green canopy, I continued clearing spaces so that the little trees, yellow lantana, and pigeonberry were protected.
The house behind mine was for sale. When SXSW came, a man constantly on his phone, dressed in a laid back professional style, was exploring the house and yard. He seemed mesmerized by my sideways tree, even took pictures. Could he have been scouting locations?
Turned out that a giant, horizontal umbrella traps a lot of Texas humidity. By July, powdery mildew started spreading its white dust in the dense shade. The turning point came when it threatened the main live oak. The poor oak had already paid a heavy toll to the ice storm, losing the better part of its canopy, and it was putting everything it had into a slow, stubborn recovery. It was the anchor of the emerging woodland. This would not do, that live oak had to survive. Time for the broken tree to go.
In a fit of overconfidence, I considered cutting it up myself and even bought a small saw. But the job was too big. I called the professionals, and it took two of them with chainsaws a mere hour to clear the sideways tree.
After they finished hauling away the debris, the backyard was open again. The sun shone in and the wind blew through, drying out the mildew and reviving the young woodland. But it had been a lovely time wandering for six months among the branches of a confused sideways tree.
