Can you spot the difference in these two pictures, taken a few days apart?
Yes, when I took the one on the right it was a sunnier day. The spruce trees have gone too. We’re pleased; they sucked light like a black hole, those trees did. It wasn’t only those six that were chopped down; the road that runs along the side of our garden is the boundary to a small forest several hundred metres deep, planted fifty years ago. In the past few weeks the farmer has taken the lot; these spruce were ready, their time was up. All that remains are some scattered birch and a few hazel bushes.
We had heard about a year ago that it was going to happen. Then, suddenly, this snorting beast was on our doorstep.
What a machine!
Look at this:
It clamps itself to the trunk with its steel pincers and saws it through, sometimes as close as six inches from the ground.
Then it upends the tree and the two black wheels rotate, which pulls the trunk through the yellow fist while stripping off all the branches. It all takes two or three seconds.
This one, below, it grasped high up in order to avoid a telephone cable (the one you received this picture though, as a matter of fact). A lumberjack had to do the cutting with a chain saw.
The driver and operator of the machine was very funny. He said that people love to watch him, so he always has to be aware of where they’re standing. The ones he has to worry about are the old men; they act like they aren’t interested at all. He’ll be about to fell an enormous hundred-year-old spruce and he’ll suddenly spot two old men hiding behind it, who then pretend they’re just walking away.
(What do the goats think? To be continued…)
A Bad Guide 
We did something similar to the before and after photos, which both let in more light and we hope ended the problem of the leylandii, on our case, being blown over in gales (they have no deep roots).
Wish we’d had the farmer’s machine, though …
AJP: Spruce have shallow roots too. They are always blowing over.
I love the machine. Is it strictly a guy thing? Do women and girls go out to watch it?
AJP: Everyone watches it, he said: boys and girls, young and old. Older men don’t like to be seen watching it, for some reason.
Does this machine has some sort of recording that shouts “Timbeeeeer!” when the tree is falling down, falling down, falling down? Anyway, it is really impressive. We don’t have any beast like that here. About two weeks ago we had to cut some big branches (cyclone season is coming) and some guys climbed up the trees like monkeys. But you could see in some cases that they were not entirely comfortable up there, clinging to a naked trunk while doing they work.
But I can’t see what part actually cuts the wood, even while zooming on this picture: https://abadguide.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/chopper-2.jpg
One can see the clamps and some sort of rough wheels, but where is the sawing element?
I’ve also learned a new word today: lumberjack, who is not any smith I believe.
AJP: Well not-spotted, Sig. The sawing element isn’t visible in that picture. I’ll have to add another picture.
Lumberjacks inhabit Canadian forests. Typically they wear thick shirt-jackets in a kind of unicolour plaid (I mean for instance red or blue with the up and down stripes mixed with grey or black) and they carry big chainsaws. I think I have seen the machine that you picture, in action.
For those who don’t know what a hazel tree is, I believe that the roundish leaves in the pictures belong to just those trees. You can see that their “trunks” are much too small to interest a lumberjack.
AJP: That’s right, m-l. These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago; the hazel leaves are all gone now. There’s more about Canada’s lumberjacks here.
Lumberjacking can also be a competitive collegiate athletic event (for both men and women), at least in the world of environmental studies.
A limberjack.
Impressive indeed!
Spruce have shallow roots too. They are always blowing over.
Why don’t they learn? They’ve had, what, a million years to get it right?
And yet spruce trees are everywhere where they’re anywhere. So whatever the survival strategies are in detail, they ain’t dumb.
One thing occurs to me – if you only need shallow roots, you can grow where other trees – oak, say – couldn’t get off the ground. Maybe spruces are just living in the fast lane.
i’ve read Robert Musil’s short story about forests yesterday, it’s so so great, about one’s recuperation, i’m afraid i won’t be able to read anyone else for some long time now, the RM’s phase has begun!
so spruces are invasive parasites as i got it
not spruces, but listvennitsa or nars in my language they grow pretty quickly, my father’s birthplace’s trees which were about his heght then 5-6 yo boy now had grown to the 3 m and taller heights in 60 years, my father was very moved
“invasive parasites” is a bit harsh, read! Is that Musil’s opinion, or perhaps the opinion of a commercial forester?
3 meters doesn’t seem much growth over 60 years. “sluggish parasites” might be more apposite.
What might this tell us about the intentions of a guy sprucing up for a date?
he says pozdnii intervent in ” Kto tebya prekrasnui les.. ?’ which means late interventionist, well, maybe like aggressor, just jokingly, invasive parasite is too strong of course, just i recalled the words that way, checked it again and it says differently
here, Nachlass zu Lebzeiten http://lib.ru/INPROZ/MUZIL/musil2_2.txt
Gosh, I didn’t know Musil wrote in Russian too! For once I’ll have to pass.
Nachlass zu Lebzeiten? That’s the kind of Russian that (unlike Grumbly) I could consider reading. Although if it comes to that we have so far already left Musil’s Big Book in our pile of unread fiction for years.
But I actually came here to remark that the tree-trimmers came round our way a few weeks ago, and we and Boris had a splendid time watching what we now realise was a junior or toy machine chewing up disused trees.
We have accordingly resolved to shamelessly watch any and all lumberjacking until the end of our dags.
This is competitive tree felling, Australian style. The lumberjack has to cut notches going up the tree into which he puts those pointed boards stacked at the foot of the tree, hoisting himself up each time. Then has to cut the top off the tree.
My memory’s a bit hazy, but I think he cuts one side, scrambles down, then goes up the other side. It’s tough work but great entertainment.
This is a country event, but it’s done in a big arena before massive crowds at the Royal Sydney [agricultural] Show – or used to be. I hope it still is.
Sorry, I goofed on closing the link. AJP will be kind and fix it, unless he particularly likes blue underlining.
My father used to go to the Royal Show in Sydney. Look at that deep blue Australian sky.
These wood-chopping, tree-climbing etc. competitions are often on German television, on the sports channels. Great to watch.
The Austrians go in for “Power Man” (I think it’s called) competitions, where these guys carry giant truck tires back and forth, lift 400-kg blocks of concrete etc. Not so much fun to watch, for me. When they’re exerting themselves, their heads and necks bulge as if they’re going to explode. Like in splatter movies.
Don’t knock the Austrians; one of them could become Governor of California.
Exploding governors! I wonder if any voters took that risk into account.
Musil’s Big Book is full of long whiles (Langeweile, aka boredom). But having read it is a must in Germany, just as having read Proust’s Big’un. Someday, when I go to prison for something or other, I’ll take the time.
maybe around 6, 3 it’s like just up to the ceiling, so it was twice higher than that
Proust i never could read past the first few pages, but with RM’s Man without qualities i know it will be different
some people say they couldn’t read War&Peace or read it as if it was a hard work to do, if the book will be like reading W&P which i’ve read at least three times, the first two times following just selected people, then in its entirety
then i mean boredom wouldn’t be a problem for me reading it
Maybe spruces are just living in the fast lane.
Maybe, maybe not. From WP article “spruce”:
Scientists have found a cluster of Norway Spruce in the mountains in western Sweden, nicknamed Old Tjikko, which at an age of 9,550 years are claimed to be the world’s oldest known living trees.
There are lumberjack competitions in Canada where they do all kinds of things related to their job skills, not just the few that the students were trying for. One of them is “birling” which means 2 men standing on a rolling log in the water, each trying to keep his balance while trying to get the other guy off the log. Staying on the log is an important skill because logs are floated in “rafts” on rivers, lakes and even the sea. To form the raft, the logs floating in the middle are surrounded by other logs which are tied to each other end to end, but inside of this “frame” the logs are free and sometimes escape (see “timber rafting” on Wikipedia, which has a picture of log rafts near Vancouver, BC). If you fall into the water while walking on those logs you could be crushed between two logs, or they could meet over your head and prevent you from surfacing. The guys wear special heavy duty boots with spiked soles.
Look at that deep blue Australian sky.
Which can turn to a magnificent orange at times.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8270337.stm
Sydney dust storm ‘like Mars’ ► Copieurs !
2 men standing on a rolling log in the water, each trying to keep his balance while trying to get the other guy off the log
I’ve already seen children doing this on a windsurf board. None of them were wearing any kind of boot and if by any misfortune they had spiky soles, it was due to sea urchins.
“None of them were wearing any kind of boot”
Ahem, I believe it should have been more logical to have “none of them was wearing any kind of boot”, but it seems to me that very often people use the plural in such a case, even if there is not even one who is wearing any boot(s).
This is competitive tree felling, Australian style. The lumberjack has to cut notches going up the tree into which he puts those pointed boards stacked at the foot of the tree, hoisting himself up each time. Then has to cut the top off the tree.
This sport is also very popular in NZ. As a child I was a St John’s Ambulance cadet and when we attended these events I was terrified that one of those razor sharp axes would connect with something rather more fleshy than wood.
There was more than one who wore no boots. The statement applies to this group. So the plural verb form is perfectly logical.
There’s another kind of logic that the Greeks dreamed up. This logic lays down different conventions for clarity, and everyday sentences are supposed to be convertible into ones with the different conventions (I’m pretty sure that I’m conflating older forms of logic with more modern viewpoints here – in any case, I’m talking about English, which the ancient Greeks were notoriously bad at).
In the present case, modern logic would apply the convention that “only statements about things can be negated, not things themselves”. So a sentence apparently about the thing “none of them” should be interpreted as a sentence about the thing “all of them”. And a sentence about “all of them” should be interpreted as a bunch of sentences, each sentence applying to one person in the group. For example: “none of them wear any kind of boot” should be understood as “each of them does not wear a kind of boot”, which should be understood as “for each person in the group, it is true that that person does not wear a kind of boot”.
You, by contrast, have interpreted “none” as “not one”, and reasoned: “‘one’ is a singular form, so as the subject of the sentence it requires the singular verb form ‘was'”. This is not illogical, but merely a different kind of logic. There are many kinds of logic, if by a logic you mean “a set of statement conventions with the purpose of avoiding misunderstanding”.
The history of the development of logic in the West, primarily by the Greeks, is very interesting and very astonishing. I once had book about it, The Development Of Logic, by William and Martha Kneale, of which I unfortunately only read part. Note that the title says that logic was developed, not discovered. That’s why I keep talking about “conventions”. What I have been saying is a hypermodern take on logic.
m-l, “birling” is a Scots word. I imagine there must be quite a few in Canadian English?
By another kind of logic, it is impossible for a person to wear a kind of boot.
Should I say “was” or “were” here:
“Fewer than one of them ___ wearing boots of any kind or kinds.”
I mean, I don’t want to say “Not one of them” because that would not rule out the possibility of two or more; and I thought I should respect the logical view that “less” is wrong in such a case; and, like I tried to say, feet and kinds don’t really dwell in the same universe.
Empty: By another kind of logic, it is impossible for a person to wear a kind of boot.
Well I’m a feeble amateur here, but you ought not to apply rules of logic to language, according to Language Hat. Even if I can’t wear a “kind of boot” only a boot, I can nevertheless wear an “old-fashioned kind” of boot.
I think fewer than one person is wearing boots, fewer than one leg is wearing boots, fewer than one foot, than one molecule, one electron … is logical; but I can also imagine saying “fewer than one legs” (i.e. half a leg) “IS wearing boots” too. Some logic there (possibly).
you ought not to apply rules of logic to language, according to Language Hat
Quite right. People vary in their choice of number after “none”; there are a number of interesting things to be said about this, but none of them are, or is, that one or the other use is incorrect.
Around here, one can wear a “kind of boot,” with the sense of a bootish non-boot. And it works for enough of the synonyms to suggest that it isn’t just a lexical accident, but something about the “logic” of classification.
And then there were none
There has been at least one discussion of “none” on Language Log, which is run by experts. This word is not equivalent to “no one” (as can be shown by a number of uses) and while “no one” is always followed by a singular, “none” can take a plural.
“birling” as a Scots word: there are lots of Canadians of Scottish origin.
Children on a surfboard: they are not surrounded by fifty or more other extremely heavy surfboards which could injure them or worse if they fell into the water. And the surfboards are flat, not cylindrical, so it is not possible to “birl” them.
Hat: none of them are, or is, that one or the other use is incorrect
Incorrect? I’m not sure I understand.
I’m still feeling uneasy somehow when I hear that “there weren’t any goats around”, probably due to some Francoid sort of contamination. You wouldn’t expect anybodies to write “il n’y avait aucune(s!) chèvres dans les environs”, non? Though I’m having some doubts about “il n’y avait pas de chèvres dans les parages”, if you were for instance looking for 125 of them and couldn’t find any. But even with a zillion potential goats lurking around, I think I’d write “il n’y a pas de chèvre”, singular.
Oh, I was just kind of fooling around. Many logics or none when it comes to putting words together, is what I say.
“I am looking for AJP’s goats” – “I haven’t seen any goats around”
“Je cherche les chèvres de M. Crown” – “Je n’ai pas vu de chèvres”.
In French, I would write the plural if the conversation was about an indeterminate number of goats, but the singular only if the context showed there was only one goat involved.
“Vous avez vu ma petite chèvre?” – “Non, je n’ai pas vu de chèvre du tout”.
In English, if the fact to be expressed was that the number of goats present was zero, I could equally well say
“There weren’t any goats”
“There were no goats there”
“I didn’t see a single goat”
“There was not a goat to be seen”
but perhaps the plural constructions come a bit more naturally to me.
It would also be fun to use the archaic “There was nary a goat”.
Let me also mention the line from “This is Spinal Tap” (I quote from memory):
“How much more black could it be?”
“None. None more black.”
The most famous lumberjack in the world was Paul Bunyan, also his pet was named Babe the Blue Ox, but Babe probably wasn’t as charismatic as Muntz.
Nothing and no one is as charismatic as Muntz.