Trees

I'm coming up on my 7th anniversary in this house and I still love living here. But every time I have to mow the lawn, I toss mild curses at the enormous tree that grows in the middle of the back yard. Its root system has chewed up the back lawn and mowing is like pushing a machine over a broken up parking lot with tufts of grass growing in the cracks. Estimates of the tree's age vary from 90 to 25, but it is so large that two people on either side could not touch hands.
Still I love trees and I particularly like how many my neighborhood has. In the last week or two the Dutch Elm Tree Inspector "H" has been through the area and several lovely trees have an orange circle around them and the letter "H", which means that their time is now coming to an end. It never ceases to amaze me how different a place looks when a tree is gone.

My neighbors have been trying to decide what to do with a tree in their back yard that is clearly dying. They've decided to have it "topped" tomorrow, meaning only the top, dead branches will be taken off. I'm afraid the tree is really not in good shape, but I think I can understand the difficulty of taking down an entire tree.

This afternoon when I pulled up in front of my house, I realized that the lovely shade in my front yard was actually coming from the enormous (and healthy) tree in my own back yard. So no more curses (or at least only ones under my breath). I really do love my big tree.