TIMBER!!

A couple of years ago a very large branch was broken and blown down by the wind from a tree in my back yard.  That tree seemed to have some sort of disease because over the last several months, more and more of it has been dying off.  It had gotten to the point that anytime a wind or ice storm came through we stopped wondering if, and instead, wondered how many, more branches would be knocked down out of it.  We finally decided that the tree was too far gone to come back and needed to be cut down.  I don't like the idea of cutting down trees much at all, but it was necessary.  We consulted a tree specialist who agreed that the tree needed to be removed.


So yesterday, when I came home for lunch from work, I found this going on at my house.  I had to take pictures from inside the house looking out my kitchen window because I didn't want to get hit in the head by a falling branch!

I wanted to stay and watch them take the whole thing down, but my lunch hour was up, and I needed to get back to work.  So I returned to work and when I got back home again, this stump and a lot of sawdust was all that was left of the tree.

It makes me a little sad to have the tree be gone, but I am already planning to plant some new trees this spring in the back as replacements.  I won't be planting another maple as we already have two large maple trees in the front yard.  I would like to plant two cherry trees or perhaps an almond tree.  Maybe I'll plant all three!  They are all much smaller trees than the maple tree that was there, and I think they would fit nicely in the back yard.


As happens so often, this whole tree cutting business put a song in my head.  And, as so often happens, the song in my head has very little to do with the actual event of the day.


When I was a young girl, both my mother and grandmother listened to a great deal of country music.  I can't tell you how many old country music (or country and western as they called it back then) songs are drifting around in the cells of my brain.  I can tell you that the lyrics and melodies of these songs pop into my awareness at the oddest times.  This tree being cut down from my back yard was one of those odd times that made one of these songs resurface. 


So the song that has been stuck in my head for the past two days is this one by Ferlin Husky.  I have a feeling that very few, if any, of my readers will be familiar with it.  My brother and I (as little kids) would sing along to the record of this that my mother had.  My brother liked to sing the deep voice bass echo part while I sang the melody.