The Tree

The Tree.  The center point of a treehouse and probably the single most important part of the entire project.  This must be taken seriously.

Ok, so I may be over dramatizing this a bit, but it is important to get a good tree.  Since we have a lot of trees to choose from on the property, we can be somewhat selective.  For the first thing, we do not want a fast living tree.  This includes Poplar or Birch, both of which shoot up to a nice size, but don't live for very long.  They also have very spongy wood so it would not hold a fastener very well.  We want this treehouse to last a little but and it would be bad news to come back to The Hut someday and find the treehouse smashed to the ground.

The criteria I was looking for was as follows: a big tree at least 5 feet in circumference, healthy with no mushrooms or excessive dead branches, straight with at least 15 height that is free of branches, a neighboring tree that is about 10 feet away, and not Birch.

Well, there are a lot of Birch trees on the property.  They look nice and tall and big and straight ... but you just know they are going to be a recipe for disaster sometime in the future.  Mia and I walked the property looking for a nice big tree that is pretty much ANYTHING other than Birch.  There was a lot of "look at that tree ... aww nuts, it's Birch".

We concentrated on the bigger trees that were not Birch.  Some looked a little sick.  Some were REALLY far away from The Hut.  Some didn't have a neighboring tree that was big enough.  After all the searching, we kept coming back to the same tree.  This one:

And this is her sidekick:

Here they are together:

What I like about this arrangement is that the trees are about 11 feet apart, they are straight and healthy looking.  Here we are measuring the bigger tree's circumference:

Over 7 feet!  Ok, this is a good tree.  But, what kind of tree is this?  There were no leaves close to the ground to pick, so I had to take a picture zoomed into the leaves that were way up:

So what do we have?  Heart shaped simple leaves, alternating pattern, smooth surface... after doing the research, we have a wonderful specimen of an American Basswood.  This will work nicely.  It doesn't have the regal stature of an Oak, or the sexiness of a Maple, but it should have good heartwood to tap into and will live 120+ years.

I am not quite sure of the sidekick tree because I didn't take as many pictures of it, but I think it also is an American Basswood, which is fine with me.

Now that I have the tree(s) determined, and I laid it out on paper, I can design the treehouse that will span between the two trees.  This is the REALLY fun part.