[ponyakr]

OK, I've been cuttin down trees, & clearing out the bushes, vines & briers, around the cars. I'm being careful to try to leave the main parts of the big trees/limbs that are on or just over the cars.

Doing this so I can see exactly how many trees were involved & exactly how tall they were.

As I began to clear out between the middle car & the #3 car(closest the trailer), I discovered that the limb that hit the LF corner of the middle Bird knocked the LF fender completely off. It's on the ground, between the 2 cars.

Made these 5 pics this morning.

(1) This one is sort of an overall view of the current scene, taken from aprox where the top-most limbs landed. Can see parts of all 3 cars.

(2) This shows the #3 Bird & the cleared area along it's Western side. Also cleared 12-15' past the car, along the Western side of main tree section. No end in site. This tree(or trees) must be much taller than I first thought.

(3) This pic is a head-on shot of car #2 and the tangle of big limbs that crashed down on & around it.

(4) This shot turns a bit towards the East, to include the #1 green Bird.

(5) This pic pans just a bit farther, including the truck, just past the green Bird. I've cut the trees that were between the car & truck, but haven't removed the tree tops from the rear of the truck.

Will still take quite a bit of labor to completely clear the area, & measure the big tree(or trees).

After that's done, I'll then get the trees/limbs off the cars. No hurry, since the damage has been done.

Still playin Putt-Putt. Had my best round yesterday. Shot a 5-under-par 45, for the 10 holes. Had a 3, 3-fours, and par 5's on the other 6 holes.

Note: Pooch ran off with a ball a couple of days ago, & hid it out in the woods. So, I'm now waiting 'til his suppertime, when he gets hooked to the leash. Hate to spoil his fun. But don't wanna have to buy as many balls as he can hide.

[ponyakr]

Well, it's been real dry here, recently. A small pond beside our driveway/entrance road has all but dried up. Nothing left but just a mudhole, maybe 20ft long by 8-10ft wide, & probably less than a foot deep.

But, it rained here, off & on, most all day Wed. Got everything wet. So, I took this opportunity to make a burn pile, over at the '69 Bird site.

Since everything was wet, I took several gals of used oil, a gal of old diesel, & a gal of old gas with me. Poured several gal of the oil, about a half gal of diesel, & maybe a quart of gas on the biggest brush pile I'd started. As usual, just to be safe, I made a small, narrow trail of gas, out to a safe distance from the pile, & lit it with a match.

As I mentioned, everything was wet. But, of course the trail of gas caught up & began a small fire down under the brush, where more gas & diesel had been poured. But, that didn't get the fire hot enuff to catch the oil on fire. Had to CAREFULLY add a splash of gas in a few places around the pile. I think it's pretty cool when the small fire contacts the fresh gas & POOF ! All of a sudden you haven a nice hot fire.

[ponyakr]

So, after the fire got hotter & some of the oil caught up & more big branches began to burn, I began to pile on more of the branches, bushes, vines, & briers I've been cutting.

Once the fire really got goin good, it didn't take long to burn most of what I had cut near that pile. Was able to cut some more of the stuff, near the pile. But, the fire was too hot to get very close, for the 1st hour or more.

Well, it finally burned up almost everything I'd piled on it, & I was about ready to quit, anyhow. So, I just let it burn down. There are several good larger pieces left, which will be good to make the base for the next fire I build there.

Will probably wait til the next good rain, then build the fire the next morning. Don't wanna set the whole area on fire. The surrounding cutover has LOTS of cypress weeds, which I'm sure would burn quickly, when dry.

The wind kept changing directions today, which seemed to cause the smoke to follow me, everywhere I went. Got too thick a few times, creating a "must move now " situation. But, there was plenty of stuff to burn on all sides of the pile.

So, how many of you guys burned brush near the '69 Birds on your property, today ? Hey, I may have been the ONLY guy in the whole world who did that today !

[ponyakr]

We had several more days without rain. So, I continued clearing away the bushes, briers & vines, but leaving the big tree which is on the cars.

These 5 pics show the big tree, from several angles.

[ponyakr]

While it was too dry to burn anything, I began to build another big pile to burn.

Cut up the trees I'd cut down between the green Bird & Truck. Had quite a few big chunks to put on the bottom of the pile.

Don't look that big in the pics. But, there was lots of wood in that pile, before we got another rain.

[ponyakr]

Well, it rained here, off & on, for 12 hours or so, on Wed. So, Thursday morning I took my fire-makin stuff over to the site & made a fire !

I made a slight mistake. The wind was coming mostly from the North. So, I should have started the fire on the North side of the pile.

But, since I poured lots of oil on the pile, it all eventually burned, after the oil got hot enuff.

[ponyakr]

Ya'll can notice in pic F7 that I took the pic from the South side, just as a puff of wind came from the North.

As soon as I clicked the pic I did a quick "exit stage left" !

I could definitely feel the heat !

[ponyakr]

It appeared as tho the fire was gonna die out, before it burned everything up.

So, I tried to move the unburned pieces to the hottest part. But, the heat coming from the orange embers was just too hot for me to get very close.

So, I had to just leave it to burn as long as it would. I reasoned that I could burn what was left, in the next burn.

[ponyakr]

Well, I went back to the site today, thinking the burn pile would look just about like it did when I'd left it.

But, to my surprise, almost everything had burned, as ya'll can see in the 1st pic.

Today I began doing some more clearing between the trailer house & the closest Bird. There were lots of briers at the Northeast corner of the trailer.

I was glad I had my new hand pruners, to deal with the briers. The spring in my old pruners broke. So, I ordered a new pair. After doing an extensive search, I'd decided on a cheap pair to try.

So far, they are great ! They're very sharp & you only need one hand to operate 'em. They have a spring loaded latch, which pops open as soon as you squeeze the handles together slightly.

Also, the blades are at an angle to the handles which points the blade tips away from my chin, while stored in the small bib pocket of my overalls.

There are lots of more expensive pruners out there. But, for my purposes, I can't imagine a pair working any better than these. If they'll last at least a year, I'll probably try to buy the same brand next time, if still available. They're probably just a cheap Chinese brand. But, my old ones that have the broken spring have "Made In USA" on 'em, along with a patent number, & now they're broke.

Here's the link, in case anybody is interested.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[ponyakr]

Made a big burn pile from what I cleared next to the trailer. The clearing & burn pile operation required several tools, including a chainsaw, hedge trimmer, weed trimmer with brush blade, limb loppers, hand pruners, stiff rake, yard broom, & manual labor. Hey, TJ even went over & helped me one day.

It rained again Thurs morning. So, Fri morning while everything was still wet with dew, I loaded up my used oil, diesel, gas, matches, & went over to do a burn.

Almost no breeze. Perfect day for a burn. And even tho the pile had lots of big stuff on the bottom, after I left, the pile continued to burn slowly, 'til almost everything was gone, as can be seen in the last pic.

[ponyakr]

Cleared a little directly in front of the truck.

Then I started on the section just between & behind the middle & West Birds.

Cleared about 25ft or so behind the Birds. Lots of vines & briers, as well as some bushes & switch cane.

As ya'll can see, I'm not moving the big wood off the Birds. Gonna clear away all the underbrush & stuff, then get some good pics of just the tree(or trees) on the Birds. Still very interested in the size & number of the tree or trees.

[ponyakr]

This 1st pic is made from the section that was cleared, lookin North. Shows both cars, with tree(or trees) on 'em.

While makin this 2nd pic, I noticed something else.

I had forgotten that the middle Bird had what appeared to be a crude homemade roll bar in it. Appears that it kept the roof from caving in any farther than it did. So, I assume the car was raced, at some point.

I reckin these Birds were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

[ponyakr]

Still can't tell how many trees are involved or their length. Still have lots of clearing to do, in order to reach the base of the tree or trees.

Had to approach the middle Bird from the East side, to clear behind the rear.

You can still tell that the trunk lid had big racing stripes on it. One thing's for sure. Whoever painted those stripes could never have imagined that this would happen to this Bird.

[ponyakr]

Yeah, the lunar eclipse is workin pretty good this morning. If anyone sees this, close to the time I'm posting it, you still got time to see most of it.

https://www.nola.com/news/weather/ar...WRX0pLoYvNa8-0

And, the Kevin McCarthy filibuster is still workin pretty good. He's been talkin for hours now. You can still catch some of it on C-SPAN.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...BJbQ7vPLVO_sPM

I now bid to all a good night ! :

[ponyakr]

Well, TJ & I went over to the Bird nest yesterday, to uncover the big tree(or trees). Turned out to be just one big tree, with several forks & big limbs.

1st thing we had to do was cut a trail to the root ball, thru the maze of small trees, bushes, weeds, vines, & briers. We both got several battle scars from the briers. We used our weed eaters with brush blades, hedge trimmer, Kobalt chain saw, WEN chainsaw, & hand pruners. All worked good.

Took a while, but we finally got there. The root ball looked to be aprox 10-12 feet in diameter. Went back & cleared the junk away from one side of the tree, so we could get good pics. The trunk diameter was aprox 4 1/2 feet.

[ponyakr]

As we checked out the tree, we discovered that it made several forks, pretty much going in every direction.

As mentioned before, it made direct hits on 2 of the Birds. One of the big limbs almost landed on the trailer house. Some of the small limbs did hit it.

Another limb hit the LF fender of the Green Bird.

[ponyakr]

I suggested that TJ get up on the top tree section, to get pics from there.

Where she was in the 1st pic was aprox 21" in diameter.

Had her raise her left boot up out of the 2nd pic. It shows the big forks.

From her high perch, she took pics of the tree hits to all 3 cars.

[ponyakr]

Here are some more pics, beginning down at the root ball, then showing the forks. again.

Pic 3 shows the 1st Bird hit, from the rear, again.

The last 2 pics show close-ups of the 1st 2 birds.

Notice in the last pic that "Pooch" is investigating the site.

I suppose now that we've made the pics, I'll try to get the limbs off the Birds. But, because of the diameter of the trunk, it'll have to stay where it is. Our equipment will not handle stuff that big. Hopefully, I can cut the limbs into small enuff pieces so that I can get 'em off the cars. That won't repair any of the damage. But, at least I can then keep the area cleared off.

[ponyakr]

Yeah, 2 of the Birds look like a big monster mashed 'em.

I got all the trees & limbs off, so we can now see all the damage that was done, by ONE tree.

These 1st 2 pics are of the Bird nearest the trailer. Next 3 are of the center Bird.

Notice in the 3rd pic that the top pipe of the roll bar broke loose at the weld.

[ponyakr]

Yeah, this now looks like a home for battered Birds.

Got a lot of the wood moved. Still plenty of work to do.

But the hardest part is over now.