Family Mellmann

The Durnbach War Cemetery is located in Bad Tolz, Bayern (Bavaria).  The site was chosen, shortly after hostilities had ceased, by officers of the British Army and Air Force, with officers of the American Occupation Forces. This cemetery consists mostly of those airmen shot down over Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Austria, Hessen and Thuringia. Their remains were brought here from their scattered graves by the Army Graves Service. The remainder are men who were killed while escaping from prisoner of war camps in the same areas, or who died towards the end of the War on forced marches from the camps to more remote areas. There are 2,934 burials of WWII , 93 of which are unidentified. One grave in the cemetery contains the ashes of an unknown number of unidentified war casualties recovered from Flossenburg. Another grave contains the remains of 6 unidentified U.K. airmen. There are also 30 war graves of other nationalities, most of them Polish. In the back corner of the cemetery (left en...

Celebrating Joerg's mom's 70th birthday.

Unfortunately, it's time for this beautiful tree to come down. I've been calling it the Leaning Tower of Conifer because, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, its lean has been increasing gradually for a several years. By now, the lean is so deep that we're concerned that it will come down in an unplanned way and take out a car, part of the house, or a kid playing in the yard. This is the lean BEFORE the tree guy got started.

It was a great tree, and its lowest branch held the rope swing for the kids. We're really sorry to see it go. I guess we'll have to find a new branch to hang that swing on.

It took less than a minute to drop this big old tree.

Once all the preliminary cuts were made, it took only a few seconds for the tree to fall. We love our trees, but we'd rather have them fall "on purpose" than in a high wind or storm.