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The Fall of the old Madrone
Nov. 7th, 2008 07:07 pmLast night one of my kids mentioned a 'tree leaning on the fence' - being in the process of doing three things at once as usual, I dismissed it as being a reference to one of our neighbors dead poplars, which has broken in the middle and is now leaning on its fellow tree being an excellent squirrel-bridge while it awaits a winter blow to bring it down to earth.
But when I went out on my deck to shake out some rugs this morning there was a strange black dog in my yard. "WOOF!" he uttered in a freaked-out "omg, it's a person!" way and ran - into my back yard! I followed, to shoo him out of my yard if nothing else, it's big but all fenced in.
And behold...
Once upon a time a madrone tree and a fir tree grew up together, twined and sharing as two loving siblings...until the fir grew to be the stronger of the two and stole away all of the water and sunlight and other plant-goodies that trees depend on. Eventually, the madrone gave up the proverbial ghost and has been hanging there, a brittle remembrance of things past, a suitable subject for angsty black-and-white photos but otherwise rarely thought of.
Until yesterday, upon which Time had its way and the base of the tree rotted through, dropping the entire lot into our neighbor's back yard. This did surprisingly little damage, but *did* knock off two boards from their fence...hence the dog.
We got out our moderate electric chainsaw and went to work, I plied the elderly lady in the house with banana-bread as a peace offering. More branches and logs to toss and haul on the morrow. The wood has long since lost its youthful veneer of striking oranges and reds, it is silver, grey and green with old mosses. Beautiful even in death.
But when I went out on my deck to shake out some rugs this morning there was a strange black dog in my yard. "WOOF!" he uttered in a freaked-out "omg, it's a person!" way and ran - into my back yard! I followed, to shoo him out of my yard if nothing else, it's big but all fenced in.
And behold...
Once upon a time a madrone tree and a fir tree grew up together, twined and sharing as two loving siblings...until the fir grew to be the stronger of the two and stole away all of the water and sunlight and other plant-goodies that trees depend on. Eventually, the madrone gave up the proverbial ghost and has been hanging there, a brittle remembrance of things past, a suitable subject for angsty black-and-white photos but otherwise rarely thought of.
Until yesterday, upon which Time had its way and the base of the tree rotted through, dropping the entire lot into our neighbor's back yard. This did surprisingly little damage, but *did* knock off two boards from their fence...hence the dog.
We got out our moderate electric chainsaw and went to work, I plied the elderly lady in the house with banana-bread as a peace offering. More branches and logs to toss and haul on the morrow. The wood has long since lost its youthful veneer of striking oranges and reds, it is silver, grey and green with old mosses. Beautiful even in death.
