For Wilshire Baptist Church
Late Saturday morning we took a walk at White Rock Lake between helping set up Wilshire’s Fall Festival in the parking lot and taking it down later. It always amazes me how taking an event down takes a fraction of the time as setting it up. I’m sure it’s because dismantling doesn’t require as much planning, coordinating and attention.
So, we were walking at the lake between the Poppy Lane entrance and Sunset Bay, in that area where the road and walking paths make a wide curve through the trees, when we heard a loud crack and looked over just in time to see a large pecan tree branch hit the ground. We stopped a moment to look at what had happened, as others around us did, including a group having a picnic nearby, and then we continued.
At Sunset Bay, we walked out on the pier through the bulrushes and were pleased to see that the pelicans had found their way back to their winter home. There’s something reassuring about seeing them every year, especially during this time of COVID when it seems like nothing is going according to plan. I see the pelicans and I know that nature and creation are bigger than this relatively brief moment in time. The pelicans aren’t bothered by our worries, although I imagined a newcomer in the flock asking a veteran, “You said it would be warmer in Dallas, but 95 degrees in October? Are you kidding me?”
We continued walking out around the tip of Winfrey Point and then turned back toward the shade because it was 95 degrees, after all. Coming back to where the tree branch had fallen, we walked over to get a better look. It was probably eight inches in diameter and 10 feet long. I looked up into the tree canopy and saw two stubs from where it might have broken off. Curious about its weight, I reached down, picked up the end and lifted it a couple of inches but quickly set it down. I’m guessing it weighed at least 500 pounds — enough to hurt or even kill someone if it fell on top of them. A man walked by with a dog and we both looked at the picnickers near the tree and agreed that we might move if we were them. He pointed to where some yellow caution tape encircled an entire tree that had collapsed.
We have smaller pecan trees on our back property line, but at my previous house I had three towering pecan trees. I describe pecans as “self-pruning” because they will drop branches that are dead or if their weight has become too great. It’s not uncommon to pick up scraps of branches at our house after a windy storm. One morning at my old house, I raised the garage door to find a huge branch laying across the driveway. I had to drag it out of the way before I could leave for work. The best way to prevent breaks like that – which may deform the tree or damage property or even hurt someone – is to do some preventive pruning.
My old house is in the neighborhood just across Buckner from the lake and we drove by it after our walk on Saturday. I was glad to see the pecan trees were still standing tall, but some of the large branches were hanging low and I could tell it was time for pruning. But that takes planning and coordination and sometimes it seems easier to just let nature do its thing. Which is fine for migrating pelicans but not so much for old pecan trees.