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Thankfully the renovation storms inside have died down, but the summer storms outside have raged many nights. It seems that three or four blow through each week, marked as blobs of orange and red on the radar screen. When you have a large number of eighty-year-old trees scattered around your house, and little resource to keep them as well maintained as they should be, a brightly colored radar blob can be an easy source of anxiety.

With last week’s storm, our fear came true, and we lost part of the old Eastern White Pine. It was inevitable, and we had even planned to remove it in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different timeline.

With the wind howling and the rain pounding against the study windows, I could still hear the characteristic woosh that only a forty-or-fifty-foot-plus great White Pine could make as it fell. And then there was the expected, and yet very shocking, crack and thud.

With a flashlight in the rain, and a deep fear that it had hit the corner of the house, I could see just enough to know that the tree had thankfully missed the building. Unfortunately, it landed on the side of the old Siberian Elm, taking a large branch with it.

Over the past few days, we’ve managed to cut up the smaller pieces, moving them out of the way to prepare the bigger logs for firewood. It’s not hard to see why the Eastern White Pines were so prized in colonial days. This single felled leader is beautiful and strong wood. Known as “mast trees,” and used extensively in ship building, Eastern White Pines were the source of many attempts at control during, and leading up to, the Revolutionary War.

It remains to be seen how long we can wait before removing the other two leaders. One is even taller than this one, and neither are in structurally sound condition. Once this pine is gone, there is only one other on the property. It’s perhaps time to think about planting a couple more for future generations.

Many years of wisdom

The old pine in the snow