Treehouses and Palm fronds

At the moment, Grandma and Granddad are visiting- they live a long way off, and so we don’t get to see them much. But they’ve come up for a visit to the hot Kimberley climate, and they’re keeping us kids very busy.

We have a lot of palm trees in our garden, and lots of palm trees means lots of palm fronds, which all need clearing out and moving onto a bonfire. That’s been one of our big tasks for the last week, helping the grandparents move out all the palm branches onto the trailer, and then onto the bonfire heap (which is now very large). In fact, the hardest part is moving the branches out of the trailer and onto the large bonfire heap because the pile is so heavy, and we want a quicker way than lifting them piecemeal.  

Our second project has been to build a treehouse in one of our trees for Nomi and Daniel. The basic construction is a flat platform on a wooden frame wedged between several vertical branches of a large tree. That may sound simple, but when you intend to place a heavy wooden frame that covers 8 square feet up 24 feet into the air, cut a hole in a branch for one of the frames to go into with a blunt chainsaw, lodge this frame into the tree by rope-and-tree-branch pulleys, and then finally nail some planks for a floor, it loses some of it’s simplicity. Another brain-twister has been how to devise a ladder that is both safe to climb up, durable and easy to remove, because we don’t want little kids climbing up and falling off. The ladder and a railing is all that is left to do, and then this treehouse is done!

So, in one week, we’ve placed a large wooden platform 24 feet into the air, lodged in a tree, and moved about 4 large trailer loads of palm fronds and branches out of our garden and onto the bonfire. Yes sir, the grandparents are keeping us busy!

If the photos on HSB are working alright then I’ll try and get some photos of the kids playing in the treehouse- 24 feet off the ground! Gulp! Grandma, Jess, Mum and I all think it’s a little high off the ground, but Dad insists that’s how high he built his treehouses when he was a kid. Yeah, but they didn’t have The Health and Safety Commission back then…

10:14 AM - Apr. 16, 2009 - post comment

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hi Josh - great to hear you are so busy! I agree with you 24' is a long way up but I am sure the kids will thoroughly enjoy playing up there - they both thrive on risk!

Missing you all
Mum

Mother - 6:21 AM - Apr. 17, 2009

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Hey!

wow! Sounds like a ton of fun!! Tree houses are so cool! I've always wanted to have one but we don't really have big or strong enough trees to do that.
That would be so cool to see pictures!


Well, I'm not sure if it really is true but it could be.
I got from an e-mail from a friend. Ya know how all those forwards go around. Most of them are stupid but I thought that this one was really funny.
I'm sure that some kid in the world has played that joke on their parents. That would be horrible!!

So how are you?

~Sheilla Kiwi

Rachsters - 6:04 AM - Apr. 29, 2009

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