There are numerous options available to select and buy tools. For successful results, you must begin with a survey of your own needs. Be it Drill or Grinder or Chains, or Saws or Sanders, each tool involves options between various retailers, schemes, models, discounts and delivery time. The manufacturing brand you choose is also a significant decision. Your options may also depend on the technology being used by the leading brands like Festool, Hitachi Power Tools etc.

The rise in gas prices has diverted the thoughts of people to fuel sources that can be an efficient alternative to the existing ones. May 2008 saw average gas prices in the United States nearing, and in some places going above, $4. 00 per gallon, breaking records. However, this was not at all new to consumers of America. The month of May created a lot of records, and it occurred after months of surging prices. Those who adapted early are making the move to hybrid cars already, and in the end, we all will be traveling on gasoline-free vehicles.
Researchers say that alternative fuels alone cannot be considered a way for achieving mobility that can be sustained. However, the analysis they conducted places hybrid vehicles and petrol right at the brink of the table when every energy factors from consumer use to source are considered. They added that all alternative fuels they took into account were more effective compared to the cars, which are mostly used today.
At the moment, a consensus has not been reached associated with transport development that is sustainable. Even if the transport sector sets a specific energy saving goal, there is a lack of agreement on what actions should be taken for achieving this goal. Various lobbying groups adopt diverse attitudes to the dilemma and adversaries of any specific approach usually can find proof to propose a specific attitude is not going to last. The current bio-fuel dispute can be regarded as a typical example.
Yet, a number of factors have to be considered in evaluating a specific alternative fuel, the substitution route, the reduction route and the efficiency route. Strong defenders are present for each, but the reality is that, between them, there are considerable gray areas. One significant aspect of the debate, which is overlooked often, is to make sure the three influential categories – nitrogen oxide pollution, carbon emissions, and energy use – are taken into account together. This has been a highly difficult job and should only be performed with intense care.
Researchers employed a simple system for ranking, based on attaching each form of energy a particular weight according to its influence in these three areas. When the adding up of weights is done, each energy chain is given an overall figure. Those having the biggest figures are regarded potentially the most harmful, environmentally.
Interestingly, the analysis done by the researchers post an alternative based on fossil, conversion of natural gas into hydrogen for fuel cells at the tip of the table. However, direct natural gas usage in hybrid cars is placed lower down the table taking into account pollution, energy, and efficiency. Usage of biological methanol in fuel cell vehicles is placed at the end of the list in spite of the fact that unlike natural gas biomethanol is a potentially renewable resource. The researchers reiterated that all single chains failed to achieve the best score on all influential categories. Always some kinds of trade offs are involved. Thus, no clear-cut winners are available; only trade offs between various influential categories.

Outdoor power equipment is tools or machines used in making outdoor jobs easier and enjoyable. These equipments save time and enhance the value of properties and homes. Useful outdoor equipment is in great demand in the market and a must to have in order to beautify one’s property. Such equipments are garden tractors, lawnmowers, trimmers, utility vehicles, edger, chain saws, snow throwers, tillers, leaf blowers and other related products. The industry continues to produce outdoor power equipments and develop new technologies that help people in their homes, especially with regards to environmental protection. Here is a list of three most useful outdoor power equipments in the market today: 1. Lawn Mowers A lawn mower is a machine with one or more revolving or rotating blades, powered for the maintenance of thick and tall grass, as well as rough terrain. It comes in different types such as:

There are numerous ways to get on with gas-powered RC truck or car. Lots of real like features are available in the remote-controlled tucks and cars. There are various types and styles available in the market. On the choosing part, you should look into many things before you own one.
Radio controlled trucks and cars are deficient in running time and also power. But if you’d like a change, the cars can be converted to gas powered RC trucks or cars, by using nitro methane based fuels. With the help of the fuel, the RC cars get a level of performance or realism, which is disadvantage in normal vehicles powered with battery. Apart from this, the cars are customizable and it’s easy to change the parts of the car and personalize it. You are given choices of transmitters and engines which are available to choose and modify your car the way you want it to be.
To guide on the quest for the perfect gas powered remote controlled car, consider the following factors:
1. Engines: This is the crucial thing in a gas powered RC car; there are a variety of engine types available in the market to choose from. Normally, a lot of the RC cars use an engine type known as ‘glow’ engine. It’s a combustion engine with 2 cycles, which gives power to the remote controlled car making it ready for realism which also gives exhaust while doing it. Instead of the spark plugs used by the automobile engines, for this type of engine, a ‘glow plug’ is used. This plug is heated by a thing called ‘glow starter’. The heat given is stored by ‘glow plug’ and this is used to fire the engine strokes for the remaining power.
2. Fuel: Similar to gasoline powering the automobiles, nitro methane-based fuel powers the RC cars. The mixture of the fuel is mixed with specific lubricants to protect the engine from extra heat produced in the combustion process. The lubricant is similar to the gas-oil that is used in chain saws and other small engine equipments. In order to get the nitro methane fuel into your gas tank of the RC car, a special bottle pump is used. These cars are also are equipped with filters and just like any automobile, it needs to be replaced at proper time intervals.
3. Radio: The RC car is controlled using a radio controller and can be the same as the ones used in RC cars which are electrically powered. The batteries are responsible for the radio controller to work which works on a 2-channel system. More batteries are will be needed for the receiver to work even though there are receivers fed by the motor.
4. Competition or sport: This aspect is most looked at while choosing a body style. Many options are available for you; there are options like trucks, sedans, stock cars, buggies and more popular models of car. These options are available in 2 versions: the competition and sport version. The RC sports cars are less expensive than any car you aim to race with, and of course this needs higher speeds and more power. Oil shocks and ball bearings are a few of the advanced facilities available for competition remote controlled car version.
Looking at the type of car you require, RTR or ready-to-car and RC car kits are available. For the amateurs, RTR kit is what you need to buy because this comes ready for fuel once outside the box. On the other hand, RC car kit needs lots of work but gives you the freedom of putting the pieces together.

Here in part 10 you’ll find out why everything you’ve read about O. B. E vibrations in books is wrong and you’ll find out the 3 easiest ways to tell how close you are to an O. B. E. The Top 3 Signals To Tell How Close You Are To An Obe If you’ve never done an O. B. E before, it’s extremely difficult to know if you’re making any progress until you’re actually already out of your body or in a lucid dream. What you need are easy to detect signals that you can use like road signs to tell you how close you are to succeeding. In this section we’ll cover the top 3 most common road signs. These are: 1 – The sleep paralysis wave 2 – Pre O. B. E rushing noises 3 – VibrationsSleep Paralysis Wave: Your Primary Signal We already covered the sleep paralysis wave in Lucidology 101 part 2. Essentially when your body shuts itself down in sleep paralysis you’ll feel something like a heavy lead blanket feeling being laid on your body. This feeling is unmistakable and a sign that you’re very close to success and you can use the exit techniques we’ll cover in part 12 to turn the paralysis into an O. B. E. Pre-O. B. E. Rushing Noises: The Second Most Frequent Signal The second road sign to watch for are pre-O. B. E rushing noises. When you tune in between stations on a radio you get the sound of random static and white noise. Once you’re back on a station again things come in clearly. It’s the same thing with O. B. E. s. You start out completely focused in your normal waking environment and as you drop into a subconscious focus you pass through a kind of no man’s land where you’re not really conscious and you’re not really subconscious. Rushing Noises Can Sound Like A Tornado Or Freight Train When you’re tuned to that no-man’s land frequency you hear rushing noises that sound like random static or a train rushing by. Vibrations: The Most Famous Progress Signal About the same time you hear rushing noises you may feel what are called O. B. E vibrations. Vibrations are probably the most famous phenomenon associated with O. B. E. s and they’re also the effect that has the most misconceptions. Almost everything to be found in books on O. B. E. s about vibrations is simply wrong and so this is a place where a lot of people get stuck. They reach the vibration stage and then get hung up because they use an ineffective method from bad advice they read in a book. The 3 Critical Vibrations Misconceptions The 3 misconceptions about vibrations are: 1. ) What they are 2. ) What they mean 3. ) How to use them. What Vibrations Are Not Here’s what vibrations are not. Vibrations are not a subjective kind of thing where you it’s like you’re “feeling the vibes, man, far out!”. Vibrations are much more mundane than that. What Are Vibrations Like? If you make a VVVVV sound, the feeling of vibrations in your lips is very similar to the feeling of vibrations that often appear along with medium stages of paralysis. Sometimes the vibrations can been extremely strong and feel like electricity, other times they are entirely absent. It’s very rare for vibrations to be strong enough to be painful, usually they just feel like a harmless buzzing in your head and chest area. Types Of O. B. E Vibrations However sometimes they can go throughout your entire body. These can be incredibly loud and feel like you’re holding on to a chain saw. A lot of people report feeling them in the spine. In one case I woke up into an O. B. E in my bed and it sounded exactly like there was someone with a hedge trimmer outside my window. I realized it was because I had off the chart vibrations that were coming from what I later found to be the L1 lumbar vertebrae in my lower back. I used deep breathing to return myself from the O. B. E because I was running more energy than what seemed safe. Most O. B. E Vibrations Are Harmless That was a very unusual experience and most of the time you actually won’t have any vibrations at all and if you do it’s no more powerful than the feeling of a vibrating cell phone. The basic thing to know is that once you’ve had vibrations, you will know it. There won’t be any question in your mind about it because it’s just a buzzing feeling and noise. Misconception #2: What O. B. E Vibrations Mean The second misconception is that most books will tell you that when you have vibrations you’re ready to exit into the O. B. E. This is completely the polar opposite of reality. Vibrations mean that you are NOT ready to exit and here’s why. Double Energy From Two Signals Physical and nonphysical awarenesses are both types of signals that you focus on. During the middle stage of an O. B. E exit you’re making the transition from one to the other and you experience both physical and nonphysical signals. These signals have energy. When you sum both of these signals together you pass through a phase where you’re running double the amount of energy you normally would. Double Energy Can Result In Intermodulation Distortion If this energy is more than your system can comfortably handle, you get distortion. The big fancy signal processing name for this is intermodulation distortion. The name is not so important as the fact that this energy hump does not go on forever, it comes and then goes and this is critical to understanding how to deal with vibrations. Vibrations Mean You’re Not Ready To Exit: Wait For “The Quiet Zone” Because the excess energy hump comes and goes, you get a ‘quiet zone’ once you’ve focused completely out of physical focus and in to nonphysical focus. So it looks like this: you start out in physical focus with no vibes. You relax into a near O. B. E and get light vibes. You relax almost to the point of separation and get majorly heavy vibes. This is where most people screw it up because of the bad advice in books. The trick is to simply continue to relax deeper and deeper past the vibrations until the vibes have smoothed out completely. Once you’re in the quiet zone after the vibes, that’s how you know you’ve completely shifted into the O. B. E. Unbalanced Tires Analogy The energy hump is like a truck I used to have with unbalanced tires. When it got up to 45 MPH it would start vibrating the entire truck. At 55 MPH it would smooth out again. The range of 45 to 55 MPH was a transition range that caused the tires to vibrate with each other. Pre O. B. E. rushing noises and vibrations are the same thing: you’re coming in and out of phase with two different physical and nonphysical signals. What About Vibrationless O. B. E. s? Keep in mind that the vibrations only happen when the total energy goes beyond what your nonphysical body is capable of conducting. The more O. B. E. s you do, the more energy you can run without problems and the less vibrations you’ll have. Eventually almost all your O. B. E. s will be vibration-free. Vibrationless O. B. E. s You’ll go from waking awareness, with no vibes, all the way to the O. B. E with no vibes which means you’ll have to rely on other signals that we’ll cover later to tell if you’re in the O. B. E. The up side to this is that vibrationless O. B. E. s are much brighter and clearer than O. B. E. s where you have to punch through massive vibrations. Why Vibrationless O. B. E. s Are Brighter And Clearer Why would that be? In a chainsaw, the noise is caused by friction. Vibrations are a form of noise, so vibrations are a form of friction. Friction is waste of energy. Chainsaw noise is a waste of physical energy and so vibrations are a waste of nonphysical energy. When you’re in vibrations you’re wasting energy so it’s a state you want to relax through as quickly as possible. Misconception #3: What To Do With Vibrations The next misconception is what to do once you’re in vibrations. For instance, Robert Monroe wrote that you should try to ’sweep’ the vibrations up and down your body before separating. Is this good advice or not?Relaxation Is The Only Solution The only way to reduce vibrations is to reduce the pressure that causes friction and that means relaxing. If you reach vibrations and then try to do something, whether it’s running the vibrations up and down your body or anything else, then the one thing you’re NOT doing is relaxing. And relaxing is exactly the one thing that you need to do when you have vibrations because only way to release the friction is to relax. No other solution will work. This is why vibrations are a major obstacle for more OBEers, because when they try to do something, anything, they are unable to simply relax into the quiet zone. Definitely do NOT try to force your way out when you’re in the middle of vibrations. You’ll almost certainly just get pulled right back into your body since you haven’t yet matched up with a nonphysical focus. The “How Close To An O. B. E? Meter”: Relax Through Vibrations Even if you do manage to muscle your way out, you’ll have spent so much energy on the exit that the resulting O. B. E will probably be so dark and low energy that you’ll just stagger around and not be able to do anything fun anyway. It’s far better to relax through vibrations into the quiet zone and then slip out of body effortlessly. The Sneaky Loop Hole: Photographic Trance By the way, there is a sneaky loop hole that allows you to cheat so you can do O. B. E. s even when you’re in the middle of vibrations. We’ll cover this sneaky cheat in Lucidology 102 part 3. The trick is to enter something called a photographic trance which allow you to have O. B. E. s at much lighter levels of trance so you don’t have to be in full sleep paralysis to separate. Exiting Even In The Middle Of Vibrations This loophole also opens the door to a technique called ‘trance recycling’ . Trance recycling allows you to have a dozen or more O. B. E. s in a row and quickly rack up a massive number of O. B. E. s in a single session. To find out more about Lucidology 102, visit www. Lucidology. com Because many O. B. E. s are completely vibrationless, you need several other road signs to tell how close you are to success. In the next section we’ll cover the 5 crucial progress signals to tell how close you are to an O. B. E.

Global warming is a fact of life that is alarming the scientific community today. They worry that this warming will change the patterns of tropical and monsoon rains, melt glaciers and ice caps, cause droughts and floods, and create deserts. Scientists also worry about acid rain and air pollution. The emissions from vehicles are partially responsible for the ingredients in the air that contribute to global warming, acid rain, and air pollution. Environmentalists have long been pressuring for solutions to these problems. Least popular have been more use of public transportation, bicycling and walking. Other more acceptable ideas are alternate fueled vehicles and smaller vehicles. But how successful will these be? If vacuum cleaners or chain saws were sources of pollution and smaller versions or alternative power were suggested, people would probably convert without a second thought. But a car is a different matter. A vacuum cleaner’s sole purpose is to remove dirt from various surfaces. Then it would naturally follow that a car exists primarily to transport people from point A to point B. Not so. A car occupies a position in the lives of its owners unequal to any other tool they might possess. To begin with, vehicles are status symbols and luxury automobiles are synonymous with wealth. But it even goes deeper than that. As far back as 1964 Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” wrote. . . “The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete in the urban compound. ” No doubt many people who walk, bike or use public transportation to commute to work would be appalled at this statement and argue that in no way do they feel naked without a car. Nevertheless, there is considerable scientific research documenting the fact that people do have an attachment to their automobile different from that of any other inanimate tool they may own. Research studies conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at Vanderbilt University concluded that people use the same area of their brain to recognize their cars as they use to recognize faces. However, this area is not used to identify other inanimate objects. Researchers at the University of Vienna discovered that people associate a human or animal face with automobiles. They also identify different automobiles with emotions such as anger, arrogance, and dominance. While musicians haven’t recorded odes to vacuum cleaners, that isn’t the case with vehicles. The Beach Boys sang, “And she’ll have fun, fun, fun til her daddy takes the t-bird away. ” Country music popularized the “truck driving man” and there was the guy with the “hot rod Ford and a two dollar bill. “ So what are the implications for a move to smaller cars? Americans have long loved power and speed in automobiles. The higher the speed and the faster a car can accelerate from 0 to 60, the more it is adored. Americans are also aficionados of large, luxury cars. Real men drove T-Birds, Eldorados and Firebirds. All of these are high on fuel consumption or ‘gas hogs. ‘ So the question is, in spite of escalating fuel prices and the pressure of environmentalists, will ‘real men’ or ‘real women’ drive small electric powered cars?

Got a car suitable for traveling over rough terrain? Then water sport is a true adventure for you. The sport is a wonderful opportunity for you to show off your driving and winching skills to a whole bunch of people. But are you ready to winch or be winched out of those bog holes in the playground? You’d better read all the things you need to know about different winches which could be very useful for you and your friends.
Electrical Winches
Powered by a double-battery system, this will be very advantageous for you. Although it gets its power from the battery of the vehicle, it also gets power from a deep-cycle type of battery that operates on its own. Thus, this kind of winch will never affect your engine’s function, radio, lights, etc.
Mechanical Winches
There are two types of mechanical winches. It can be either drum or capstan. The drum type’s power is drawn from the car’s engine carried to the winch through a shaft. This type tends to have greater power than electrical winches because it works well if and only if the car engine is working well. Meanwhile, capstan’s power relies on the vehicle’s engine still but is carried directly using a dog clutch locked in the crankshaft pulley. Just like the drum type, a capstan works while the engine is working. But to effectively put the capstan into use, you must have the necessary skills in using it. You must also choose the right rope with the right diameter so that the slip will be minimized and the rope won’t get caught by itself for it will lead to a very dangerous consequence.
Hydraulic Drum Winch
From the name itself, this winch gets its power from a hydraulic pump with the help of the car’s engine. The winch is driven using a hydro motor. Aside from its high power, the advantage of the hydraulic type includes not being affected even if it’s submerged into water.
Motorized, Portable, Mechanical Drum Winch
This kind of winch is uncommon; however it has a very fascinating system to boot. Unlike the usual winch where the vehicle’s engine is used, the engine powers of a chain saw are utilized supplying power to a little drum winch. However, this type can be very noisy.
Hand-operated, Mechanical Wire Rope Winch
This type won’t need your car’s engine. However, it needs users to exert physical strength when dealing with it. It’s definitely not made for fragile hands.

If you were to say to someone in Maine that you were taking the ferry to Long Island to visit public gardens, they would look at you and think, “What public gardens?” They would conjure up images of an outpost in Casco Bay populated by people who fish for a living and have little time to garden, and by summer residents who might have a small vegetable garden, flower bed or hedgerow of rugosa rose. But public gardens? There are none to be found. It’s a simple place where the word “ostentatious” isn’t used very often. I like Long Island, Maine ? my kind of people and my kind of gardens.
Last year, I was asked to go to the “other” Long Island, the big island adjacent to New York City, for a Day Trip. Never having been there ? and based on some of the things I had read about the Hamptons, the area I would be visiting ? I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Who wants to drive all day, take a ferry, then drive some more to see “McMansions” or rub elbows in an overpriced restaurant with high rollers from New York City? I did make the trip, however, and although it was quite different from Long Island, Maine, it wasn’t what I had envisioned.
I had a little time to kill before taking the ferry from New London, Conn. , so I took a moment to see the newly completed Athenian garden in a pocket park downtown. With a Greek-inspired mural and sculptures, it was well worth the visit. If you have more time to spend in New London, a half-day visiting the Connecticut College Arboretum also is a must.
The ferry ride across Long Island Sound to Orient Point proved pleasant aboard the 1,000-passenger MV John H. There were many interesting sights, including lighthouses and the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn. , where sub-marines are built and main- tained for the U. S. Navy. One of the subs passed the ferry ? something I had never seen in Casco Bay!
Disembarking from the ferry, I was ready for the glitz and glitter of Long Island. The first hour of driving, however, was through rural farming areas in Suffolk County, the leading agricultural county in New York. Tomatoes were ripe on the vine and potatoes were being dug. After another ferry ride from Shelter Island, I pulled into Bridgehampton, where BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedes replaced the John Deere tractors of an hour earlier.
No celebrities were sighted, but I was immediately taken by the miles of privet hedges, Ligustrum spp. , most of them sculpted to sharp angles. They delineated property lines and prevented anyone from seeing through them or over them. I became fascinated with the hedges and tried to seek out Vincent Simone, a local woody-plant expert whose books I reviewed this year in PPP’s Early Spring issue. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact him until I returned to Maine (see the sidebar at left). On every road I traveled, pruning crews high on ladders used power hedge trimmers to sculpt the naturally gangly privet into something that looked almost perfect. Back in Maine on Long Island, a privet hedge might only get pruned once a year, and sometimes that would be with a chain saw.
I soon arrived at the Madoo Conser-vancy in Sagaponack and the gardens of Robert Dash, who probably is best known as an artist whose medium is canvas. I quickly found that this multi-talented character ? I was going to use the term “gentleman,” but I knew he would disapprove ? had an uncanny eye for develop- ing landscapes.
“I do not paint in the way that I garden
or garden as I would employ the brush, although the process is often the same ? both are arts of the wrist, the broadest, largest sort of signature, if you will, highly idiosyncratic, the result of much doing, much stumbling, and highly intuited turns and twists before everything fits and adheres to the scale of one’s intention,” Dash wrote in Notes from Madoo: Making a Garden in the Hamptons (see Book Reviews on Page 132). I felt there could be no better representation of his art than that of his gardens.
In May of 1965, Dash first saw the land that was to become his passion. He bought the parcel ? a raw piece of agricultural land with an 18th-century hay barn ? and by 1967 was on his way to creating Madoo, which in an old Scottish dialect means “my dove. ”
Upon my arrival he quickly took me to his gardens, which were designed as a series of rooms. We strolled past the boxwoods of the knot garden and down the rose walk, which features a brick-lined rill. My eye was drawn through hoops entwined with climbing roses to an exedra, a Grecian brick structure with an oculus and a linear mirror to extend the sightline. This was just the first of many garden designs befitting an artist. I have seen ginkgo groves, for instance, but none that utilize tightly pruned boxwoods, or “box balls,” as Dash’s does.
“Rather a wild stroke,” he said.
We passed four quincunx beds, with a fastigiate yew standing at attention at each corner of each square bed. There was a hermit’s hut tucked into another garden, and Dash proudly showed me an oriental bridge surrounded by native plants. As we walked, he explained that the keys to successful growing are lots of manure and proper pruning.
Pruning? I was looking for privet that didn’t look perfectly square, and I found what I wanted. Dash has taken mature privet and treated it in a way that will provide an opportunity for all gardeners with overgrown hedges ? an opportunity to make a statement with plants that will have visitors saying “wow,” as I did. Imagine 20-foot-tall privets ? with trunks the size of small trees ? pruned up a good 10 feet.
“Now aged and knobby, they still look like the legs of young ballerinas, but young ballerinas wearing old rehearsal stockings, pilled and raddled,” Dash wrote in describ-ing the effect.
After walking through his many other garden rooms, it was time to have a glass of wine. The wine led to a discussion of what needs to be changed at Madoo, and the amount of grape juice consumed may have influenced the fate of the knot garden. We agreed that it interfered with the view down the rill to the exedra, and it must go!
Running late, I reluctantly left Madoo and arrived at the LongHouse Reserve just as it was closing for the day. A busload of visitors was being escorted out, which allowed for a look at the gardens without anyone else present, and the setting sun created lighting conditions that couldn’t have been better for photography. But being late also meant I didn’t get to spend much time with Matko Tomicic, the executive director, or any time with Jack Lenor Larsen, who created this wonderful landscape filled with works by artists ranging from Roy Lichtenstein to Yoko Ono.
Garden enthusiasts come to LongHouse not so much for the plant collections as for ambitious landscaping, and for a variety of spaces sometimes referred to as outdoor rooms. Among them are the Red Garden, the Dune Garden, the Grass Garden and the Lotus Pond, in addition to several all

You’ve been warned that a storm is coming. Standing outside your home, looking over your place, you realize that you’ve got to do something about those beautifully large trees. If you just let them be, you could lose them. They may even damage something on your property or something else nearby. You’ve got some serious work to do. What this means is that you’ve got to make some time to prepare your yard for the coming storm in order to prevent possible damage. Hopefully, you won’t need more than 2 hours. You’ve just got to ensure that you don’t have to worry should things get bad. And be sure to do this only after you’ve properly and completely secured in and around your home, after you’ve stocked up on the supplies you’ll need. It’s only after all that that your attention should be given over to securing for your yard. Alright. You’re securing your landscape for a storm with sustained winds of at least 40 miles an hour. Over a short time, really terrible damage could be done to your trees. The nature of a storm with an eye is for the target to endure a pummeling by winds from one direction for the first half, as the storm approaches to meet you. Now, as you’re enduring the second half when the storm is moving away, the winds have shifted 180 degrees so that they are now coming from the opposite direction. That’s a lot of stress on trees and their root systems. First this way, then that way-for many hours, if not days. I’ve seen 10 foot trees, and taller, snap back and forth to the ground, back and forth without stopping. Very freaky and more than a little scary. Trees at highest risk of damage by winds this strong usually have a large spreading crown that is at least 15 feet off the ground. A tree, or a branch, could be leaning just a bit too much one way and sure poses a hazard of becoming snapped or broken loose. A tree could have injured or damaged branches or trunks, a weakened structure somewhere that just needs a little push to finally fall to the ground. Profuse growth of mushrooms or other fungi at the base of trees or in the ground around them are specific indicators of vegetative decomposition. Keep a sharp eye. Could be that the root system is failing. This could mean that the entire tree could easily topple. You’ll need to make a judgment whether each tree is strong enough to take it, or if it’s likely unable to make it. Decide if you’re willing to risk it coming loose and becoming a flying projectile. And flying projectiles you must avoid. You’ve got to take down any branch, or tree, that you know is weak enough, or may be weak enough, to break off, be ripped or torn off, or even uprooted entirely. Take a measure of every tree in your yard to within 200 feet from the house. Medium to large trees with a full spreading crown need to be thinned down. This means that you lesson the amount of vegetation up there. Remove all the branches that make up the perimeter of the crown, along with shorter, heavy ones that you think may break or become airborne. You could even reduce the crown from the top by a few feet. If the crown is really thick and full of leaves, you’ll want to trim off branches everywhere. If you’re really worried, remove a good 50% of all foliage. I like to reduce it to only 30% of the whole. This would depend upon each tree and how healthy and strong it is. Really large diameter trunks or branches can be taken down with a chain saw or an axe. And I really, really wish that you know exactly what you’re doing and that you’re doing it safely. If you’ve got to climb, you’d better know how to climb. Otherwise, honestly, don’t do it. A ladder is highly, highly recommended. Smaller trees, even large hedges, can also be trimmed, if you feel it necessary. Other tools that you can readily use are hedge shears or pole saws. Now don’t get sidetracked and start pruning just to make your place look good. A storm is coming! Focus!You’ve got to consider power lines now. Look at the location of any power lines that pass over or beside your property. Are their branches or trunks that, if they snap and fall, are able to touch or even brush against any power lines? Never forget that a snapped power line or a downed power pole could result in a loss of power, electricity. This will then result in loss of power to water wells and water pump stations. And now you have no water. Believe me, you don’t want to go there. Trim it down. You should also consider branches or trunks near the house, near other buildings in your yard, near cars, boats or other large contraptions. If the storm is strong enough, don’t take chances. They’ll grow back with time. You know it. What you don’t want is to be sorry that you couldn’t just cut that branch. You wouldn’t just trim that tree. If you had, your car wouldn’t need a new windshield. Your bedroom wouldn’t have that large branch in it. Really give each tree the consideration your home deserves. Don’t take chances. Be safe.