Oh, what a day it's been. The kids and I spent a solid 5 hours at the elementary school last night while I volunteered my time doing a 'photo booth' as part of a fundraiser for the PTO. While we were doing that, Sven was making his way home from San Diego after a week-long business trip. (I believe he got home somewhere around 2am?!) At 8:30 am, the tree company was knocking on the door ready to get to work. This has been a long time coming, and I still wanted to halt the operation at the last minute. I get attached to things....like really attached to things. We knew the cottonwood tree in our yard was approaching the end of its life, but when the leaves started popping out this last week it made me wonder if we were making the right decision to bring it down. Realizing that it would be coming down one way or another, we knew it's far better to be in control of that situation than leave it to the force of nature. Still, it was hard. It's been a cornerstone of our yard as long as we've lived here (and apparently for the last 30 years as our neighbor reminisced that the tree was planted the year his daughter was born.... sniff, sniff.... although odds are it would have hit his house had we not been proactive about this). And, of course, my concussion from a cottonwood branch last summer gave me the gumption to finally say goodbye to this massive tree. And, why not, we decided take down the overbearing Russian Olive tree while we were at it. So, join us for 4 hours of exciting events that transformed our yard....ummm.... and not necessarily in a way that I like more. But, on the bright side, we'll have two new trees delivered in the next few weeks that, just like our kids, we will be able to watch grow.
Cottonwood before...
Big empty space after....
Russian Olive before....
Oh, hello, neighbor, after....
backyard panoramic before
backyard panoramic after
