Looking back, I should have cut it down ............ but procrastinated.
About four years ago, I considered felling it, but by then it was 2ft in diameter and goodness knows how tall. I've searched through our photographs to see if there's a recent shot of it, but no sadly.
I'd had enough of this damned tree, and as it was far too big for me to safely bring down with any confidence, so looked up ways to kill it. I figured on letting it die or at least stopping it growing.
To that end, I stripped the bark off it all the way round about 2ft off the ground, and about a foot wide strip. I left it six months but it didn't seem to look fazed by this maltreatment at all. Next, I drilled half inch holes into the stripped area, and syringed Roundup into the holes.
A year later it showed definite signs of distress, and maybe a year after that, I could see that it was dead.
Then, we had the storms and the high winds in mid February, and one morning it was down! Never heard a thing during the night other than the wind and rain, but down it came. It landed across the wire fence into next-door's but as it's very rural and woodlandy here, the was no damage other than to an ash and an oak. The fence was knackered anyway.
I set about clearing the tree. I took all the thinner branches off with the croppers and shredded them in our electric shredder.
The rest of the tree is work in progress and it makes good firewood. Remember the tree was dead, and probably had been despite not looking like it for a couple of years or more.
There are two things that have surprised me about eucalyptus wood. No, gobsmacked me.
1. It's very heavy. Far heavier than oak. It cuts easily and splits with the log splitter easily too, but it's damed heavy!
2. The grain is very coarse. I suppose it would be considering how fast it grew. The individual rings are going on half an inch apart.
Just been cutting some of it into logs. One barrow-load done and ready to bring in, then perhaps another two loads. There must be a hundred loads yet to do!
I'm going back outside shortly ......... just having a cuppa ............ and I'll take some more photos.
