Cutting Down the Trees - Part II

I have to tell you that cutting the trees was not an easy decision. However, it is one that has been in the making for several years, so when the opportunity came I jumped at it.

As I may have said, my Dad planted those trees almost 40 years ago. He had just bought the house and vacant lot next door after my mother's untimely passing and had to move out of the house where they had lived because as he put it, 'it's like living in a haunted house'. Everything in the old house my mother had touched, had made, or used and everything was basically 'her things'. He couldn't cook in the iron skillet because he knew they had bought it when they married. He couldn't sleep under the quilts she'd made. He said it was like nothing there was his.

So, he bought the house 'in town', bought some new furniture, and began to move on with his life, which he did and for that I'm grateful.

A fellow came by one day, those many years ago, and offered some pine seedlings for wind breaks. When you live in the sand this is important. He gave them out all over town. Daddy took about 40. He planted two rows of trees, and fortunately several of them died. Then he thinned them out, and ended up with about 20 trees. They grew and they grew. This went on for several years. Dad remarried, moved to another town and used the house as rental property. In other words, he didn't have to clean up after the trees.

I came into possession of the house after his death in 1993, and had an emotional attachment to the trees since he had planted them. I moved into the house in 1995 and it became my job to keep the mess they made cleaned up. My brother came and cut out some of the ones that were spindly leaving me with 13 trees. Then the power company cut one whose limbs interferred with the power lines leaving 12. An ice storm killed one and another just up and died.

When these trees were young, they were full and bushy at the bottom, and were indeed a wonderful wind break. As they got older, they dropped lots of pine cones, but were still pretty handy and the wind blowing through the needles was music. As they have gotten older, they are not any good at holding back the sand that might blow since all the foilage is way, way, way up in the air. And now, they not only drop pine cones, they drop limbs as well. The area down on the ground is ugly and won't allow grow to grass. And you have to remember, I'm now 59 years old, and picking up pine cones isn't one of the things I want to do into my retirement.

I'm sorry the squirrels won't have a place to play, and we won't have shade for our family get-to-gethers,(they make parks for that, don't they?), but the trees needed to come down.

It has changed the look around my place, which will be more apparent when we get the limbs cleaned up and the stumps ground out, but I don't think I will regret having them cut.

What decisions have you been working on for years? How many different resolutions have you come upon?

Hope you are having a great Wednesday. Do something silly. Make someone smile.