My friend Natalie's excellent post on the real meaning of the classic children's book The Giving Tree reminded me of our own recent arboreal adventures.
We have a pair of giant maple trees in front of our house that flank the small parking area. Every time there's a storm, or the wind blows the right way, the trees give give generously of their branches -- the small ones and the large ones. Branches in the parking area, branches across the sidewalk, branches hitting the house, big branches in the street -- yes, these are truly generous trees. But eventually, all the giving just got to be too much. So I called the city's street department.
Since the trees are in the park strip between the sidewalk and the street, it turns out that they're not our responsibility, which I found out six weeks later when a city crew showed up at our doorstep before 8:00 one morning. The verdict: One of the trees got a nice trim, and the other one was too far gone inside, and got the chop before it could fall on its own and smash our house.
It was pretty exciting to watch them cut down the tree, and apparently, we saved a TON of money since the city would do it (I've been told this by my parents, one of my uncles, and helpful members of the city crew themselves). And we have an added bonus: Since we've got one less tree, we were able to get a satellite dish for TV and now we can kiss our crappy cable provider good-bye! And that, my friends, is definitely a gift worth getting.
P.S. Lest you think I'm too callous about the loss of our ancient friend, you should know that we've already planted a flowering plum tree nearby (but out of the way of the dish) to balance things out a little.
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