Much Ado About a Tree

Today, there was much ado about a tree.

When we moved into this house 15 years ago, there were two acacia trees, one date palm, a juniper shrub, a tall, mature pine tree, a bird-of-paradise, and a saguaro cactus in our front yard.  Drought took out the shrub and the bird-of-paradise, the fire took out the enormous pine tree, the saguaro died of some kind of root rot, and today, after discovering a major crack along the trunk of one of the acacia trees, it was time to admit defeat and take it down.  Paul went out early in the morning, in the cool of the day, with his wee sawzall (the chainsaw is up at the ranch, where he’s used it to take down dead junipers and cut them up into firewood), and began a long two hours of working on that tree trunk.  He had to take a break or two, but finally got it down.  Then I had to haul the kids out of their beds and get them shod and out to the yard so they could help haul all the branches into the trailer, and THAT was another big job, though certainly made lighter by the many hands.

See gallery below (click i for captions).

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The one faint hope we retain in the midst of the sorrow and tragedy of this loss is that the suckers on the base of the tree have been flourishing splendidly, even whilst the top part of the tree was dwindling and dying.  We will keep watering them and hope to keep a little of our jungle flair in the front yard, even though we’ve lost a third of our shade.

Maybe there will be room for a front yard gazebo now… one lives in hope! 😉