Tree apology

I'm passionate about saving native bush so feel bad about my day's activity which involved cutting down four rimu that were blocking the winter sun. When I first moved here there was a row of rimu planted about 20m from the house; fine through the summer but from late April they blocked the low winter sun; five of them were cut down in May 2011 which provided a gap for afternoon sun. With shorter hours at work (I now have 11 mornings a fortnight at home), the time had come to drop a few more so that the house would get the morning sun as well. The rimu that are left do block a bit of sun but I've left them for the birds that like to perch up high.

Before the neighbour turned up with his chainsaw

One tree down and now sun on the grass

Third tree down

Last tree falling down

More sunshine can get through to dry things out

I've spent the rest of the day carting the wood rings out of the bush and chopping them with the axe. Last time I left the logs laying with their tops on for a year to dry out but had trouble splitting it. My neighbour has kindly chainsawed the trunks into manageable rings and it's been easy splitting so far.

Tree rings aplenty

Rimu 'bleeds' from the cut bark...

...and drips onto the axed wood; sorry tree!

Lovely sunshine mid-afternoon

Lovely firewood for next year

My resident ngirungiru spent the day checking out what we were doing - he even offered to do some chopping for me...