Learned a new thing

Close call

On a late September work trip to the property, I noticed a whole lot of bark debris in the road. Upon survey of the area, I found this slice out of the bark of a large spruce tree.

Puzzled as to what may have caused such a strange pattern, I brought D back the following weekend.  The slice started up in the tree and wound its way diagonally to the ground.  Besides the bark fragments in the road, and the slice through the bark, there were no other signs of trauma: no branches down, no chainsaw scars, no burn marks that we could see.

The slice started about 30-40 feet up in the tree but still 20 or 30 feet from the crown.

D, being the woodsman that he is, diagnosed the injury as a lightning strike!  So cool.  There had been big bad thunderstorms for a few days a week prior to my visit, and since this tall tree is near the ridge line, it made a perfect conduit for a lightning strike to find the earth.  What surprised me was the lack of any char.  We are thankful the thunderstorms came with heavy rain, which possibly prevented a catastrophic wildfire.

Toys

D got a new mean tool: the brushcutter.  This bad boy is basically a circular saw on a stick. 

 

We flagged where we think we want the driveway to go in and worked on clearing the path of brush and logs.

After a hard day's work, the sunsets are that much more beautiful.

We are nearing the end of summer and the snow will be flying soon.  We contracted a land surveyor to get our 2-foot contour map created, so we are excited about that.