Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Sunday morning, while we were enjoying breakfast with the guests, there was a huge crack and then a big rumble. There wasn't any rain or wind, just a lot of noise. A balsa tree had fallen over. It was probably about 100 feet high and it just gave up the ghost and came crashing down.

No one was hurt, nothing was damaged (except for some smaller trees nearby) though it was a load to cut up and clean.

The picture is just something pulled from the Web, though it did take a long time to clean up. It was probably about 4 feet in diameter and while it was balsa wood, those chunks were still heavy. Just to make things even more interesting, the tree was wrapped in vines that had big thorns on them, so it made the cleanup even more fun.

Things grow very quickly down here and as a result, the roots don't get too far into the ground. This big bugger just fell out from the roots.

Just as an aside: Those cool, light balsa planes that I put together as a kid are nowhere near as light as the logs we pulled out of the tree after it came down.