And Here’s an Industrial Strength Woodchipper for You
Posted on May 31, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 30 Comments
And yet Steve Buscemi is nowhere to be found. Probably just as well. What’s being fed into the chipper are not my enemies (so far as you can prove) but the fallen limbs of the increasingly wan Bradford pear tree you see there next to the woodchipper dude. I do not have particularly high hopes for the rest of the tree making it through the summer, but we’ll have to see what happens. That poor tree.
So, uh, that your friend in the woodchipper, there?
I think that Mr. Buscemi was around earlier. He just isn’t around any more. Really.
You know, we had a peach tree that got fungus (hubby over-watered) and we were *this* close to pulling it up last fall. I mean, this tree looked pathetic and every leaf has blight. We decided to wait and see how he did after the winter and it came back! Not only THAT, this poor little runt of a tree has TWO peaches after only being in the ground one season!! LOL So don’t give up on your little tree just yet ;)
Entirely coincidentally, John “Bricktop” Scalzi is starting a pig farm.
It probably says too much about my preferred reading (scientific forensics–the procedural stuff, not the sensational “true crime” stuff) that the first thing I thought of when Scalzi said “wood chipper” was the case a while back where the guy killed his wife in their bedroom, rented a wood chipper, dismembered her and fed the pieces into the wood chipper to destroy the evidence.
So we had a storm blow through on Memorial Day evening. It ripped off a huge Maple branch and threw it on my lawn, yanking the electric line right off the side of my house. The following day, I saw one of those industrial strength wood chippers across the road making short work of a downed tree. It was taking branches six inches in diameter and sucking them into its ravenous maw like it was nothing. I turned to the electrician working on my house and said “Have you ever seen ‘Fargo’?” He shivered. I guess he had.
If I had that much land, I would buy my own wood chipper. And have chipping parties. Will It Chip?
Thank you. I was hoping for one of those today.
A look back at the pear in its prime (and a bald scalzi?):
http://www.scalzi.com/404.html
I have a Bearcat 3″ chipper, 15hp engine, I refer to it as “The Fargo.” My kids think I take to much pleasure in chipping.
If we hear that the reviewer from Kirkus Reviews has mysteriously disappeared, should we suspect something?
That’s not a wood chipper, http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370408636492+ is a wood chipper
And now the tree is shouting “SCAAAAAAAAALZI!!!!!”
Dear Bradford Pear Tree, Esq.,
THIS IS THE PRICE OF FAILURE, MR. TREE.
Love,
Your Landlord
Weren’t you going to cut it up, for firewood? …
THIS IS THE PRICE OF FAILURE, MR. TREE.
But Bloefeld would then spare Bradford Pear and chip a completely different tree to prove how evil he is.
My folks had two pear trees. After the first year, one of them looked like yours, but the left it and some 23 years later it started yielding fruit, and a lot of it.
There are no possessions I have that are so dear to me that I wouldn’t consider shredding them in such a glorious machine. I fear for my ability to resist the temptation.
You should see about getting some clones off of the pear tree if it produces good fruit. Then plant the new trees in the yard. A good, reasonably simple, hands on project.
http://www.bghydro.com/bgh/static/articles/1205_cloning.asp
Thats a good how to. Just do a bit more research and buy your equipment elsewhere.
Perhaps you could even get some grafted onto the existing root stock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting
That’s how I now have a small grove of various fruit trees. They aren’t producing yet but they are all less than 6 years old. A local organic farmer gave me most of the clones. I can’t wait; Asian pears, heirloom apples, peaches. The squees of joy when I start getting fruit……
You should give it a shot!
This is a Bradford Pear, kids. It doesn’t produce ANY fruit. And it’s a soft, crappy, structurally unsound tree to boot. When I worked for a tree surgeon,we used to HATE the frackin’ things. You plant them secure in the knowledge that, after ten years, top heavy and with badly inadequate root systems, compounded by incompetent planting, they will come down in a storm, smashing your minivan and killing your cocker spaniel named David Tenant.
^ amatuer ^
so take Thatpotteryguy’s advice.
Don’t pity that tree. You think that tree would pity you if you were falling apart? Hardly. It would be sinking its roots into you before you lost your first limb.
Bradford pear trees are one of the fiercest predators of the Plant Kingdom. And they’re sneaky jerks, too.
Seems to me I’ve said this before here, but we’ve had four – count ’em, four! – Bradford pears that fell to pieces and eventually all of them got chopped down and hauled away. One of them fell on our house, the ungrateful bastard.
At least your tree is clear of anything to hit on the way down. All I’ve got working for me is luck. This Monday, my maple dropped two good sized branches, one behind my car, one beside it. Both branches had to pass over my garage to get where they landed. The same storm broke off a much larger branch which came down today, landing behind the garage and missing the garage, cable TV, and power lines.
Woah, is bradford pear really that bad? Why are they still getting planted, then?
Carina,
Cheap. Grow Quickly. Pretty Flowers. Developers don’t care if the tree falls apart in 15 years.
Man, I need to borrow that this weekend. I have 3 trees to cut down.
Looks tippy (I mean the tree, not the chipper). Better keep lopsided cat away from lopsided tree. Or maybe you have something else you need to make lopsided?
It would suck if there was a branch stuck and u had to go push it…. ughhh… i would never work as a wood chipper!
Yeah, as mentioned before, Steve Buscemi was the one who was, um, MOSTLY not there anymore. And it wasn’t “friend” or “enemy” in the woodchipper, it was “accomplice,” wasn’t it? As in, “And I guess that was your accomplice in the woodchipper.” John Scalzi, you bring out the nerd in me.