Many years and a few lifetimes ago, I bought a house in a brand new subdivision in Vancouver, WA. It backed against a greenway with a forest of tall Douglas Firs.
“Those are junk trees,” the builder assured me when I asked if they would ever be cut down. “There’s no value to ’em.”
How I wish I’d read between the lines! The trees may have been worth nothing, but the land they were growing on was another story. Less than two years later, they were clearing them all out to make way for another subdivision. Instead of a forest on the other side of our fence, we ended up with a house.
I was so upset about this, I couldn’t resist heckling the tree cutter when he came to remove those beloved pines. “Hey, jackass!” I called out to the man suspended 50 feet overhead. “My grandma can cut down a tree faster than you! Get a real job, loser. I hear McDonald’s is hiring! Hope you can flip burgers better than you can fell trees!” I doubt he heard a word over the buzz and whine of the chainsaw, but it made me feel somewhat better. I suppose the real power move would have been to chain myself to the tree in protest, but this was the ’90s, not the ’60s, and I was no Joni Mitchell.
The point is, I love trees. Unlike my former octogenarian tree-hating neighbor Nancy, taking down even a single tree is anathema to me. (Sorry for the $5 word. It fits.) Which is why today’s events on the MarTar homestead might surprise you.
In this case, it had to be done. Four of the large pines on our property were dead. The Eastern Red Bud, so beautiful in the spring, was rotting from the inside out. And too many limbs were growing too close to the roof. So, I contacted a tree cutting service, and today they turned a whole lot of wood into sawdust.
Tara wanted wood chips for the garden beds she’ll be planting next spring. They were kind enough to back the truck up and let us have ’em, so we ended up with a veritable mountain of mulch, along with some logs for the wood stove.
I didn’t even know this was happening until mid-morning. The tree service had come out for an estimate over a month ago and warned us they were pretty backed up with work, so it would take a while. They called me around 9 a.m. saying they had an opening in their schedule and could squeeze me in right away.
Normally Wednesday is an in-office day for me, but I switched up my schedule because we were also having a new water softener installed today. Which ended up happening concurrently. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most productive day ever, what with all the distractions.
And yet, I still managed to knock out a bunch of client content and make a big ol’ pot of Italian Wedding soup for dinner.
Clark Kent ain’t Superman. Mark Petruska is.
Mark My Words 
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