Bradford Pear: Designed to break

While we were in Nashville a few weekends ago, there were strong winds there overnight. Apparently those same winds made it to Lexington on Sunday morning and pruned a Bradford pear tree in our back yard.

It took Adam, Becca and I two weekends to get this cleaned up, but it is done now.

I cut up small branches for Becca to carry to the front yard, but I couldn't get her to stick at it very long. The only way I could motivate her to help was to suggest that she play a game with Buster while moving the sticks.

Adam, on the other hand, motivated himself in a couple of different manners. First, the opportunity to use a hatchet and second, the potential of creating a fire.

The picture on the right side is the "fire pit" after it sat outside a week in the rain. Obviously, he never got around to the fire part.

Now to the question... Why would God design a tree to break?

These trees are the beautiful flowering variety that are found all over the commonwealth of Kentucky. Yet, in every ice storm or windstorm they are the first to go.

We purchased our house with one in the front yard, but it collapsed before we moved in. Inspecting the bark, a neighbor pointed out that this particular branch had started to fall away years ago.

This is the tree that the kids climbed and swung in while they were growing up and I was always telling them to be careful with all the contraptions that they put in the tree because of its weakness.

Looking back on the two weekends of work to remove the branches, I now think I was wasting my breath with the kids. Although these trees were designed to break, knowing that a half damaged branch could sustain that much weight through the torque of many storms, makes me believe there is nothing the kids could possibly do to damage a 20 year old tree with weight or leverage from swings or stands.

I'd still like to keep Adam's hatchet and fire away from all of our things in our yard.