Beautiful Tree

 

Adventure Location: Decatur, Al.

Adventure Date: 5-26-2021

Click the pic to enlarge.

We have been passing this grand old tree for several years and always thought it was a beautiful tree.

In the warm weather it provides shade for lots of onlookers at the soccer practices that happen in the adjacent field. The the bad wind storms of a couple of weeks ago happened.

We did not notice it at first but the root ball had changed angle a little bit. This morning something else had changed and we could see that the base has lots of rot in it.

The OFM worked his way over to the base to get a photo of the way the base was leaning. When he got there is when he got to see all the rot in progress. All around the base and up the sides are stress cracks caused by the winds and not enough wood left to do the job.

The OFM tried to get a picture of the opening between the ground and the leaning part of the base. What the flash picture revealed is that the base is pretty well rotted out and gone. So the inside is hollow, at least at the bottom.

It appears it is only a matter of a couple of more years and one big windstorm and the old tree will be gone. WE will definitely miss saying hello to our old friend each time we walk past in the mornings.

Now for some good news. The OFM checked his resting pulse rate shortly after the 2.5 mile walk in 65 minutes. It surprised us that it was only 62 BPM. That is not bad for a 74.75 year old man. Yep the walking is doing a good job of helping the OFM keep on trying to have tooooo much fun.