The Black Flag Cafe©

Houston has such excellent urban architecture

Hitoru wrote:

That is a super cool pic!

50" + 70' tall. That IS big.

Some development guys from Flint showed me a 71" dbh Burr Oak down there when we were talking about working out a deal. We never did work anything out - I wished I had a pic of that tree though. It was an old farm tree - nowhere near 70' tall though - super big broad crown with first branch up about 12' - would have made a great front yard swing tree. Biggest ones I've seen on my timber sales were in the 44-46" class in NW OH. First branch up about 40' in the air. Those were giant and off the USFS NE volume charts. I had to get out excel and extrapolate a best fit value.

Would like to see more of that size timber, but it's almost all been cut within the last 200 years or so.

I never have done any tree climbing. Don't know the first thing about it, other than it's dangerous and you'd better have good insurance and a whole lot of equipment to hoist those branches down.

You got some awesome pics there for sure.

Yeah, the pecan in that pic is around 50" DBH and around 90' tall. The pics were taken at 70' or so. My rope is 150' and we use the double(d) rope technique. So both ends my rope ended up 6' off the ground at my highest point .75'+6' = 81' .

This tree has over four different structures (houses etc) under it.

There is an art to proper pruning , a separate art of rigging, and our lives are dependent on a properly tied hitch

If there were no structures involved it wouldn't really be any big deal.

Easy money ;)

Houston 2.21.2011







2.22.2011

Those are some nice views from up there. It is still solid snow up here and cold as hell. What is that clump of stuff in the last pic? Termites or fire ants?

Woodsman wrote:Those are some nice views from up there. It is still solid snow up here and cold as hell. What is that clump of stuff in the last pic? Termites or fire ants?

Some type of (tooth ? )fungus.
It's supposed to be 80* today.

Our ropes are too short to belay for now.
But I plan to be jumping off this bridge one day in October of 2011.

False Crotch.
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The Regency Bridge, locally known as the "Swinging Bridge," is a one-lane suspension bridge over the Colorado River in Texas. It is located at the intersection of Mills County Road 433 and San Saba County Road 137, both gravel roads, near a small community called Regency. The bridge saddles Mills and San Saba counties.

The bridge has a span of 325 feet (99 m) and a wood surface. It was built in 1939, with most of the work being done by hand. The bridge was restored in 1997, with then-Governor Bush attending the rededication service. This was a major event for the community of around 25 people.

Vandals set the wood surface on fire on December 29, 2003 [1], burning a hole in some planks. The bridge has since been repaired and reopened to traffic.

A nearby historical marker, located on the southeast side of the intersection of FM 574 and Mills County Road 433 (which is just east of the intersection of FM 45 and FM 574) reads:

This area's first Colorado River bridge was at Regency, on Mills-San Saba County line. Built 1903, it served ranchers and farmers for going to market, but fell in 1924, killing a boy, a horse, and some cattle. Its successor was demolished by a 1936 flood. With 90 per cent of the work done by hand labor, the Regency Suspension Bridge was erected in 1939. It became the pride of the locality, and youths gathered there in the 1940s to picnic, dance, and sing. Bypassed by paved farm roads, it now (1976) survives as one of the last suspension bridges in Texas.[2]

Fantastic. I am putting that on my must see list, before another farm boy on a horse takes too many cattle over it again (Cows are so stupid, they just don't understand the need to break cadance on a bridge)

4.5.2011 Smith Woods, High Island Tx.
Pruning widow makers out of the Audubon folks live oak trees.

This one is pushing 9' DBH

6/3/2011 Houston .
I took a on contract to move a 8"diameter 35 ' tall White Oak to one side of the property to the another.

Damz! That's one badass piece of equipment right there!

8.12.2011 Sheldon Reservoir

Sheldon gets its water from Carpenters Bayou, a maze of shallow channels and wetlands that fans northward for several miles. But a series of public and private construction projects has diverted more than 60 percent of Carpenters' flow into Lake Houston to the east and neighboring Greens Bayou to the west.

The public projects include the northeast portion of Beltway 8 and a city drainage ditch, both built in the late 1980s, and more recently, the first section of the new West Lake Houston Parkway, which will connect the Beltway to FM 1960 and Kingwood.

On the private side, developer Rick McCord has launched Summerwood, a subdivision that will eventually spread over 1,500 acres he owns directly north of the reservoir.

And currently it has nearly dried up.
And once again we are in there trying to control Chinese Tallow.

Red Eared Slider Trachemys scripta elegans


Buprestidae (Metallic Wood-boring Beetles)


Momma is waiting.


Her nest.


A nest that has hatched



High mortality rate ?





It's so hot all the hatchlings that survive are expected to be males.


It's unnerving when you don't see the gater holes and almost fall in them.



A "I'm not going in there moment".








http://www.houstonpress.com/1996-05-23/news/down-the-drain/

What's wrong with Chinese Tallow, looks quite a useful plant. What sort of boots are you wearing?

I have a personal grudge with those trees and I wear BAO DING SIN YANG SHOES CO SPECIAL BOOT thank you.