Monday 9 January 2012

The Plumb Tree !!!

On our return to France from our Christmas and New Year break in the UK it was obvious it had both rained a lot and been windy. Firstly when we crossed the Loire on the A10 at Tours yesterday where there is normally an island there was only trees sticking through the water.

When we got home our plum tree was plumb no more...


So today, out came the winch - again - and the process of re-aligning the tree began...

 

The winch was attached to a nearby cherry tree


Then it was time to carefully coax the plum upright

 

This had to be done slowly so as not to damage the roots.


Mission accomplished! One perfectly plumb plum!

8 comments:

Diane said...

The amount of rain we have had is incredible. More rain in November and December that we had for the remainder of the year. It was good to see the sun today :) Diane

Tim said...

Diane...If only for a moment!
Colin and Elizabeth, how were you thinking of keeping the tree upright, now you've returned it thus?

I had to come back and edit this as the WV that came up was "propi"!!

Anonymous said...

Well played that man!

SP

Colin and Elizabeth said...

Tim Leylandi do have one good use.. especially when cut down... they make great propi's. When we bought the property this tree was totally on its side, so this is the third coming for it. I am going to give it a good prune to see if it will help it survive...

Tim said...

Have you got enough 'dead' Leylandiiiii to make one of those three post 'cages' that they use at Villandry?

Tim said...

Oh... a thought... if 'tis a plumb plum, perchance 'tis the weight of the fruit, not the wind? ;-)

Colin and Elizabeth said...

Not sure what a three post cage is but we have a very large stack of leylandi, the remains of 60 22 foot (sorry 6.6 mtr) high ones - How many do you want to make a thingy.

Tim said...

Just three; sharpened and rammed well into the ground around the plumb-plum at 120 degree intervals. You join them to each other with good, scrap timber and nails to make a stable cage. You then put hessian round the tree and one of the uprights [tightish... but not too tight], repeat for the other two uprights. This allows the tree to move a bit, which strengthens the roots [but the tree remains stable].
They use this method at Villandry [and in other parks] because they have to replace dying or damaged trees with mature specimens to keep the look of the arrangements.