Photoessay #2920 - Tree-splitting!

My neighbor's maple tree split one afternoon last week.  The whole limb of the tree split from the trunkl.  A big part.  Knocked out part of the neighbor's fence.

No rain, no wind, no nothing.  Nobody messing with the tree.  Seemed like the tree was fine, a maple, been there forever.

Like trees in all of our yards.

We have a huge maple something sort of tree in our backyard which, despite a bunch of cutting back by big men with chainsaws shades most of the entire backyard.  With resultant killing of grass or lawn-like plants (I include dandelions and moss in this category).

This year our grass is 'so much better'.  This means instead of complete brown dirt and mud, the dirt is punctuated here and there with some tufts of grass that are really trying to make it.  I encourage them.  Have even watered them occasionally.

Here people don't water their grass.  Most of the time, it gets through most of the summer green.  But if it turns yellow or brown, just wait until it starts raining again and it will come back.  My new neighbor from Florida was baffled by this approach at first.

But really, why dump a bunch of potable water on your grass?

Because of this tree (and others) our yard is heavily shaded and our house rarely gets too hot.

Question to my readers, should I go out and buy new yard chairs as our current collection has that familiar Seattle mildew look.  I spent some time trying to scrub it off but it's not budging.  Before the relatives come to town?

Luckily nobody was hurt nor any serious damage done when that tree-part came down.  Just took out a section of fence.

Too bad but Kai the big golden retriever has gone back to Whidbey Island.  We kind of liked having him around.  But he did take up a lot of space and had a ton of fur.  Very affectionate.  He kind of took the spotlight off of Teddy who was smaller, has the spray on coat and defers.