Why I Oughta...

Back at the end of May, I entered a River Birch tree in our backyard into my [ Garden Diary ].  It was a tree that we inherited, but I wanted to document it during the Summer of 2018, so I have something to revisit as it grows over time.   Today, I'm entering another tree:  a mighty Oak tree that is the inherited tree that is closest to our patio.  You can see it above in a photo that I took recently as the canopy continues to leaf out. This is one of two really large Oaks that we have inside the fence line.  The other is the 'tree house' candidate that I posted about earlier this Spring . This Oak (above) is the tree that we have hung our tree swing on and you can see the ropes coming down from it in the photo. This tree was one of a few that were in a row when we bought the property, but due to the drainage requirements - we had to build an underground pit out back and swale our land towards it - we had to remove a few of the other trees.  None of them were th

Thinking this mighty Oak Tree is the most-likely candidate for a treehouse/playhouse that will mostly be built on legs in our #newoldbackyard.  Oh, and a zipline, too.  Nat has found some inspiration photos and I've been trying to plan the design, but there are a bunch of variables that I'm trying to figure out like how high the platform needs to be - both for the zipline and ability to utilize the space underneath the it, but also for the stability of the structure More on this project - like the others - as I find time to get after it.

We spent an afternoon at the Boone Hall Plantation  outside of Charleston, South Carolina.  The highlight is these 300+ year old Live Oak Trees along the approach to the plantation house. My camera phone does them absolute no justice.  Because of how their roots grow, they're hurricane-proof . Slave houses, plantation tours and history were the order of the day.