Goodbye, giant tree

Sad week: we had to take down the giant maple tree between the house and my chicken shed office.

The tree was planted by my mother’s foster parents before she was born, so it’s somewhere in the range of eighty years old. It’s been leaning, and sagging, and during the last storm almost half of it split off…and it seemed pretty clear that one night it was either going to flatten my office or my father’s study. (Or the propane tanks.)

So the tree guys came from Richmond (“Boy, you guys are WAY out here, aren’t you?”) with their impressively huge tree-removal equipment,

and delimbed the tree,


which took most of the morning and considerably delayed the start of the day’s schoolwork, since everybody had to go and watch.

Ben used my camera to document the final fall of the trunk, which you can see by clicking on the “Tree down” link below, if you’re so inclined.

Tree down

Now there’s a lot more afternoon sunlight in my office. Which is fine. But I miss the tree.