Yes, unsuspectingly and out of nowhere today, the tree which I think is some kind of Japanese Cherry tree that was in the parking strip in front of our house literally keeled over. Poor thing committed suicide (arborcide?).
I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business. It’s been about 65° all day and this afternoon I had noticed that the wind had picked up. My desk is near the back sliding glass door, and I often keep it open with the screen closed to let in the fresh air. No sooner had I been sitting here in the relative quiet working and listening to a podcast that I noticed I could hear the rustling of the big tree in the back yard’s leaves over the podcast’s voices, and a sudden movement caught my eye coming from the front of the house. I glanced the opposite direction, out the slivers of the blinds in the front window, to see nothing but red leaves.
Usually when I look at of the blinds, I see my SUV parked on the street.
I’d just looked out the front window a few minutes before when the movement of someone walking down the street caught my eye, so I know it had just happened. I went outside to find this scene of arborcide:
WTF?! The wind wasn’t THAT crazy, yet here the tree lies, all the same. There was no indication that it wasn’t healthy or that this was going to happen. I’m just glad it fell the way it did into the front yard and not onto my husband’s truck or my (leased!) SUV. Upon further inspection, it looks as if it were a model and someone had just flicked it with their fingers and uprooted the sucker:
Now, aside from something this weird happening, of course, on a Monday… it brought a lot of questions to mind. What do I do? How do I get rid of it? It blocks the sidewalk. My first call was to my husband, who said he’d have to get a chainsaw from someone and cut it up. Since my dad owns the house, I called him as well and he agreed with that idea and let me know that there’s a place I should be able to take wood to for cheaper than the transfer station (i.e. what used to be the dump).
It seems sad, ya know? That this pretty tree would just keel over one May afternoon (so soon after Arbor Day too!) and that the only thing to do is to cut it up and get rid of it. I’ll miss it’s shade over the lawn (not that we use the lawn much, or have much of a lawn anymore with this dang drought here in California). As the hubs was cutting it up this evening and stowing part of it in the bed of his truck to haul away this weekend, I grabbed a chunk as a remembrance. Lastly, here’s Dominic busting his ass to cut the poor thing into smaller pieces to at least clear the sidewalk.
