Wind

Quite a lot of twigs and leaves down from the young oak tree in the middle of our back garden the night before last. Which was fair enough on that night of wind, but I worry that it has been doing it all summer. They are mostly live twigs coming down, rather than dead twigs, breaking off at a year ring from a year or two back, presumably a point of weakness for some time. Has it been shedding twigs as a response to drought or is there something wrong with the tree?

Then lots of twigs big and small down down Longmead Road yesterday morning, with the biggest one illustrated. A chunk of horse chestnut, just waiting to come down to judge by the appearance of the tear. A problem which I associate more with beech, with their branches joining the trunk at a water trapping acute angle.

I have pondered in the past in the topology involved in the tree's feeding tubes branching off up a branch, as it were, with there having to be some kind of discontinuity in the crook. A crook which would be a place of weakness for reasons other than water retention. See reference 2, posted in the light of another wind down Longmead Road, noticed at reference 3. For some reason, these old posts were much easier to find with online blog search rather than with offline explorer search. The swings and roundabouts had tipped in favour of online, on this occasion anyway.

Perhaps a more skilled photographer would have managed to keep his shadow out of the snap, but I couldn't find an angle which did better than this one.

PS: no sign of the egret reported at reference 1 and subsequently.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/autumn-visit-and-tweet.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/botanic-problem-3.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/botanic-problem-2.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/botanic-problem-1.html.