Last Monday afternoon, there was the sound of chain saws, and, while not completely unheard of, it was unusual. I opened the front door and looked out at my next-door neighbor’s yard. A couple of men were there, sawing off large limbs from my next-door neighbor’s very large ash tree.
That meant one thing: tree is dead.
And I wept.
That tree is a tree from my childhood. We live in the house that my parents built in 1959. My parents and sister and I moved in at the end of May that year. One of the first things that almost every family did that summer was to begin planting. Little squares of St. Augustine grass were laid out on the ground, and watered carefully to encourage runners which would connect those squares to completely carpet the yard. Flower beds were established.
And trees were planted. Most yards had one or more spindly, single stalk, tree, in the front yards, the back yards, and sometimes on the sides.
And here’s what we’d do, my next door neighbor and I (when no one was watching): We’d go to the end of the block, and run, jumping over those spindly, little trees, all the way to the other end of the block. I suppose it’s a miracle that any tree lived. But they did. And, by the next summer, they were too tall for jumping over.
Over the years, many of the original trees died. I know my dad replaced trees in the front yard and the back. When Kevin was a preschooler, there was a maple tree in the back yard. They drop the most interesting seeds. The seed pods are shaped something like a feather, and the seed is at one end. When the seeds fall, they look like little helicopters. That tree didn’t last. In its spot, there’s a large crepe myrtle tree, which has just now dropped its many small red leaves. Yesterday, I raked them all up.
In the past few weeks, I’ve raked, and bagged up the leaves from the red oak in the front yard and the pin oak on the side.
And this ash tree, in my neighbor’s yard, hasn’t drop any leaves, because it hasn’t made any leaves, for most of the spring and summer. Every now and then, it would put out a small spray of leaves, out of the center, but nothing like the leaf production that it should have.
And now, limb by limb, it’s coming down.
As I was leaving the house, a couple of days ago, I stopped and talked with the tree guys. I explained how sad I was about the tree’s demise, since I’d appreciated the tree for the many years it grew there. One of the tree guys, who was, at the time standing on the roof, said, “Thanks for telling me that story.” I said, “Thanks for listening.”
A few days later, as I noticed all the small logs beginning to pile up around the yard, I asked them what they were going to do with all those little logs. They said they put them in a chipper. I said could I have some of them. And they said sure. And one of them got his trolley, and I got my wheelbarrow, and we carted a number of logs to my back yard.
And here they are. I’m not sure what we’re going to do with them. Make a border, maybe. We have a chain saw, so I think we can decide how to use the logs. And, I said to David, as well as the tree guys, that if we decide we don’t want them, we can easily put them in the green bin (which is for recycling yard waste), if we decide we don’t want them, after all. (But I think we’re going to want them.)
When you are set free, you will celebrate and travel home in peace. Mountains and hills will sing as you pass by, and trees will clap.
Isaiah 55:12 (English Contemporary Version)
I don’t do lots of traveling. But I think I should pay more attention to the mountains and hills that I pass by; and listen to the clapping of trees.