I don’t feel like saying a lot about this.  Just a couple of things…

After my Mom had suffered Alzheimer’s disease for quite some time…years…she still thought to ask when we Skyped with one another, how my little birds were doing.  In the middle of the cold winter, she’d ask if I could show her.  So, I took my little movies and posted them.  There were my little sparrows and my handsome elm tree.  My Mom would say, “Oh! God love them,” in that way that she expressed how much God loved pretty much every one and everything…but especially the poor and babies and little birds.  I think she thought that birds were in the world just to give happiness.

My tree has been like that for me.  It has given me happiness.  In the years when I suffered the loss of my marriage and the children and I set out on a journey all our own, my front yard tree was one of those special beings that filled me up with a sense of belonging and stability.

I write these words because I want my readers to know that the decision I made recently was a decision that I’ve struggled against since 2013 when it seems an epidemic of elm scale fell upon our mismanaged mono-planted community.  Some times cities are just built too quickly and my elm fell victim to the decisions of a ‘developer’.  I’m not going to go into the science of the disease or the alternative protocols to this radical one, but just this week, while I was away at work, a couple of very nice and understanding gents from Total Tree Solutions Ltd. cut down my elm.  And yes…I’ve been reliving the story, The Giving Tree, again and again ever since.

Friday morning of last week…

Yesterday.