The Ash of Dwarsgracht

This ash is holding up a farmhouse. The roots have pushed the ground into a mound under the front of the building, which has stayed level while the stalls at the back sank into the peat. Restoration work on the house is what stopped it splitting in two along the line between the risen part and the sunk part. The house is called De Essenbelt, which means the ash mound. It was built in 1820. The tree is banded at roughly 195 to 215 years, so the same generation, though neither fact dates the other. Both bomenbieb and the national register call it the most striking tree in the area and probably the thickest ash in Overijssel, a provincial claim rather than a national one, and neither publishes a girth. Dwarsgracht belongs to the Giethoorn cluster, peat country where the canals came first and the roads largely never arrived. The ground is soft and wet, buildings go up on whatever will bear them, and a big tree next to a house is not a neutral neighbour. Here it turned out to be the reliable half of the arrangement. You look at it from the path and the water. The farm is private and worked, so this one is a look rather than a visit.