I cut some more of the big cedar that I mentioned in a post back in January. Some of it has rotted so much that it falls apart when I pick it up, but a surprisingly large amount of the tree is good firewood. This is a section of the trunk near the base.
I counted around 50 rings. As you can see, it had split into two trunks at this point. There is some decay and a few holes just above the left trunk segment. Those holes lead to living quarters. It turns out that the cedar was a huge carpenter ant apartment complex.
The black in the chambers is actually ants. I had to use an insecticide on the firewood I cut from this tree to avoid bringing the ants into the house.
It hasn’t been all trees lately. We had a lot of rain, then some clear weather, and now some more cloudy skies and drizzle. This was the late afternoon eastern sky a few days ago, right after the rain and just before the clearing.
Love the color in the sky there. So beautiful. The rings on tree trunks make such interesting patterns.
I have a few cedars that might be that old on my Ozark acres, including one I call the Old Man of the Forest that is much older that everything around it, but most of my cedars are comparative upstarts with less than thirty years of worldly experience. I suspect my ambition to cut them all down will prove futile since ten times as many newcomers rise for each oldtimer I remove.
Robin — I almost don’t want to burn those pieces of cedar.
Paul — It seems that in the past there were a lot more cedars up here than there are now. Live trees are pretty rare.