Big Bada Boom
(House • Nature)
I was hacking up some PHP code this morning in the guts of a web site I’m working on, when out by the workshop there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my chair to see what just went splatter.
Really, it sounded like two or three people just fell off the top of the roof of the house, only no one was back there that I knew of at the time.
It turns out it was only the pecan harvest saying hello.
We’re pretty well covered up in native Texas pecan trees here, including some old giants perhaps 70 feet tall or so. There’s a smaller one, maybe 35 feet, that some previous homeowner allowed to remain growing as he poured a decidedly homemade concrete driveway around it.
That tree provides cover over the patio area in which we spend much of our outdoors time. It also used to provide just the right amount of dappled shade to protect my favorite tropical hibiscus and plumeria plants from sunburn. But, as pecan trees are wont to do, it grew too fast to suit me, and soon had three major branches slapping at the upper back roof of the house – not doing the shingles any favors, and casting too much shade on plants that otherwise would flower more. So I thought a lot about getting in position somehow with my trusty extensible-pole tree-trimmer and cutting back the offending limbs.
But even with the extensible pole, and even somehow balancing atop my longest ladder with said instrument, I don’t believe I could reach the bases of the branches that needed cutting. So I wished without taking action.
Even that amount of wistful wishing must, it turns out, be applied with care.
The first of the offending branches came down a week ago, blocking the back steps early one morning so that my wife could not begin her customary commute.
This second branch was about three times the size of the first one, and smashed to the ground in the flourish of audio effects that prompted my quick exit out back this morning. Count von Count would have noted that the big end of the branch was 3.5 inches in diameter, and its length was about 16 feet. The heavy end hit the edge of the carport hard enough to flip the whole thing, so that the heavy part ended up coming down on about five plumeria plants and also sliced up a succulent known as a pencil plant. The damage was minimal considering what might have happened, as the house roof and carport roof were both intact, and the car was unscathed despite being whipped by branches weighed down with pecans serving as cats ‘o nine tails.
And that was the key: Despite a very serious mid-summer’s drought, we’re going to have a bumper crop of pecans this year. The trees are so full that, as illustrated rather extremely just now, their branches can’t always support the weight. Thus, bada boom.
Native pecans are much smaller than many of the named varieties and, while no two native trees are identical genetically, I would say that in general the native pecans have a much better, more intense flavor than their more pampered orchard brethren. So we always talk hopefully about having a big crop as each fall approaches, conveniently forgetting the big branches that crashed atop favorite relatives in years past – or the bumper crop of rodents that seems to follow bumper pecan crops.
Harvesting, cracking and shelling pecans is hard work. If this year’s crop is as lush as it appears, we’ll obtain some burlap sacks, fill them up with 40 pounds apiece of nuts and take them down to Lablanc’s Pecans and Mini Storage where, for 25 cents per pound, they’ll run the nuts through a gizmo that cracks each one.
Then they give you the bags back, and you still have to go home and “shell” the cracked pecans, but it saves a lot of time and speeds you on your way to the most tremendous of pecan pies.
That is, if the angry relatives of recently extinguished tree branches don’t jump down from the sky and beat your brains out before harvest.
→ B.Dunn, Sep 09, 2009, 09 58 am
