A tree cannot be felled with one strike.
In South Carolina, there exist many different types of trees—the dominant species are pine, cypress, and myrtle gray. We also have azalea bushes and many different-colored roses! How beautiful!
Many huge pine trees grow around houses, and in the spring, they bloom and cover everything, causing many allergies.
Everyone admires the most beautiful flowers! Near our house, there was a large tree, with huge roots made it hard to walk. Our grandchildren often stumbled over them, and adults were afraid to trip over them, too.
Our family decided to trim the most dangerous of the tree’s branches. Since our children were away at work, my husband and I decided that we would take on the task ourselves and cut off these unwanted parts of the tree! So, we began pulling the branch down: first it was just my husband and me, and then my sister and her husband joined! I imagine that this looked very funny to an outsider! Imagine four elderly retirees, each more strained than the last, clutching ropes tied around a branch…and the branch does not even budge!
What should they do? No one could help them. As the saying goes, “pull as they might—they couldn’t pull it out!” The owner of the house brought out a couple more ropes. They tied them around the branches, and the elders again grabbed them with both hands. Everyone braced and pulled again. But the tree was not a cargo ship, with a load that moves on the water—nay, this was a strong branch of a huge deciduous tree deeply rooted in the ground. And the women found this situation so funny that they burst out laughing! They almost fell to the ground from laughing so much! They did not succeed that day and had to resort to the help of professionals, who managed to remove the tree! Hooray, hooray!
A rather large tree was planted in the place of the old one, and it blooms very beautifully all spring and summer. But the branches grow so much that they begin to droop and get in the way of the mailbox, so we must again trim them so we can see the road.
But that’s a completely different story! Now, us old people no longer have to worry about removing these large branches!