It is yearly tree trimming time in our town.  Once a year the town crews go around and trim up the many huge trees in our town. Even if a tree is on your property, if it looks like it has to be trimmed and within a certain distance from the middle of the road (which varies in some areas that have no curbs or sidewalks ) they will mark it for trimming or removing.  If you don’t want it gone, you have to fight them to leave it.

The fact that they will remove a tree on private property is sometimes good sometimes bad.  Our home sits on 2 town lots and while there were only a couple of plants growing, there were 14 trees large old trees here in varying state of decay.  The town removed all the ones closest to the street and that left us to remove 6 maples, several pine trees and an apple tree.   We’d actually planned to leave one of the pine trees but it was damaged by one of the other trees and had to go.. And the apple tree went a few years after the others. I tried to save it, but it was too far gone.   When the trees were taken down, a neighbor from across the street came over and told us she never realized that there was a 3 bay garage sitting behind the trees.  She’s lived here since 1954, visited the home many times, but always used the front door, never visiting the back yard.  The fact that she couldn’t see the garage when it sits directly across from her house, gives you an idea of how crowded this was with trees.   

Taking down the trees was not something we did without a lot of thought.  I love trees.  Big, small, I like them all… well maybe I can do without the sumacs growing  too close too our fence, they do make such a mess and can be so invasive, spreading on their own very quickly.   But, I do know that eventually a tree will die and these were dead or dying trees dropping branches on windy days, a dangerous situation.

I felt a little sad when we removed those great giants and felt bad again when a maple tree across the street was removed a couple of days ago.  Why they didn’t just remove the damaged limbs and try to save the tree, I don’t know.  The owner of the property didn’t seem to mind, he may have asked them to do it.  Some of the it was indeed in bad shape, but most of the tree was fine.  When I saw the sections of the tree on the ground bleeding sap, I had to turn away.

Then when walking up the stairs I looked out the window and saw this….  My Cherry trees …

We planted the Yoshino Cherries about 11 years ago after the large maples were removed.  We never thought they’d get this big.   They have pale pink blooms and can be seen as soon as you turn the corner way down the street, makes me smile when I come home.   The  Weeping Cherry is a later addition and it’s not supposed to get any bigger. I had better not since it is planted between the Yoshinos and the River Birch we added to replace the maples along the side when our neighbors complained we’d removed their source of shade.   As the weeping Cherry matures it puts out more blooms, this year is the most we’ve seen, love the color.  

Most of the other trees we planted since these have been more of the tall shrub variety, but last year we planted a Bing Cherry tree and a Gala Apple tree.  They both survived the winter and I almost did a Happy Dance when I saw that the Bing Cherry trees had blossoms!   

We are considering moving some day.. just so many stairs in this house…  but… when I think of leaving behind the trees and the many plants we’ve put in… shudder.

Pretty sad, eh?