Great Grandmother Willow Tree, sad news

Well, thanks to Baxter and his fascination with a squirrel that lives in our favourite tree Great Grandmother Willow beside our little shop we discovered a very large and deep crack in that tree.

She is a fabulous, unique and gigantic willow tree. I think, quite possibly one of the oldest trees in the County because of her mammoth circumference. It takes 4 adults with their arms outstretched to go around her trunk. As far as willows go they usually fall down around 60 yrs old or so. We had 2 willow trees in the back of our house fall down, one week a part. We have been cutting them up slowly over the year and counted the rings to find they were both around 60 yrs old. Those trees are about a quarter of the size of our dear Great Grandmother Willow.

This old dame always gets lots of oohs and aahs from our visitors and everyone seems to be unable to resist pressing a hand on her in wonder. She also gets probably as many photos taken of her as our dear little godzilla rising from the riverbank.

I've taken to tucking in all the little elves, fairies and such that have been damaged, mostly by me moving stuff around, since her bark looks like a magicial wonderland where elves would happily live.

So here it is, the sad news, while Baxter was starring so fixedly on the tree we walked around to see what was so fascinating that he wouldn't even blink. When we looked there was a giant crack running from the base of the trunk up about 15 feet. It was so deep you could actually peer into the tree and see snow hiding in the crevice and it was deep enough I could have put my arm in up to my shoulder. This crack wasn't there before the winter and now that it is there we can see that the tree is practically hollow. This is very scary since the weight of the top of the tree is massive so without some intervention she will fall. Considering how close she is to our barn there is a good chance she will knock the corner as she drops and do serious damage to the building.

We have put in the call to the tree service and are hoping that if we can just take the top off we may still be able to keep a large portion of her. It's bad timing since the number of critters that have made their spring homes in all her lovely nooks and crannies are going to be very upset.

I'll keep you posted as to how this plays out but I'm going to be shedding alot of tears if she really does need to be cut down. Even if we manage to keep 15 or 20 feet of her so the animals and woodpeckers can still use her for homes it is going to be very sad. I know willows don't ever normally get this big and she has lived a grand life but I really, really don't want to loose her.