Saving a Cypress Tree in JLSS

Every winter many old trees are lost during snowstorms. Cypress trees are especially vulnerable. They have shallow roots, and when it has been raining for weeks and the earth is saturated with water they easily fall.
When their branches are loaded with heavy snow, it only takes the wind to blow to topple some of them over.
The bigger the tree the more dangerous it is to cause damage.
We are so thankful that with so many trees falling since 2006 we never had any damage, and no one was hurt.
The timber supply to our carpentry workshop is a positive aspect of these unfortunate losses.
We were happy we did not lose many trees during the last snowstorm of the first week of February 2024.
When the SES expert Mr. Schröder visited JLSS to help assess the situation of our trees and help us cure a disease that was damaging many of them, he led many educational sessions with our students. The thing every student remembered was his famous sentence which made them all laugh: “Trees can talk. Trees can walk.”
We had this in mind when we saw the only tree that had fallen in the last snowstorm.
All the trees before it fell with a big crash to the ground that was always felt and heard. This one was sort of telling us: “I refuse to fall.” It was way-down leaning just above the roof of the old carpentry workshop, but it had not fallen completely. Its roots were still holding on. It was barely leaning on the roof of the carpentry workshop and was sort of telling us to try to save it.
Everyone was expecting the chainsaw to finish it off, but trees could talk. Anyone who saw it realized it was begging to be rescued.
The Schneller team went into action. Ropes and metal chains were prepared. Our dear old tractor of the 1960ies was brought. The tree was tied with ropes and Eliyya Salloum of the Maintenance Department climbed the nearby tree to maneuver the ropes in the right direction to lift the tree back to its standing position. Trainer Firas Saadeh of Industrial Mechanics was driving the tractor. Gently the tree was restored to its original posture.
It was then tied to the nearby trees with strong ropes in the hope that it still has enough roots to survive.
Saving an old tree which is thirty to forty years old is always worth the effort. The coming summer will reveal if this story has a happy ending. In the meantime, we can all rejoice that one of our trees talked asking for help, and we went to its rescue.