This Spring I Lost Two Trees

It's not like they just pulled up roots, wandered away and then got lost. 

So then, how did I lose two trees?

Appearances are deceiving. The tree in the center of the yard was half dead by the time the leaves disappeared last fall ahead of winter. The larger tree on the left, the entire tree that is, had abnormal, severely stunted barely alive leaves and provided no shade through summer 2014. 

With thanks to that uninvited and unwanted pest, the Emerald Ash Borer, neither tree would see another summer.

On March 31, 2015, the two diseased and dying ash trees in my backyard fell in a hail of sawdust and disappeared almost as quickly as a puff of smoke. 

A third smaller ash tree will have to follow in the same way. Last year it was healthy. This summer the leaves were stunted and some branches dead.

No fear! The tree removal guys quickly brought down large parts of the tree.

One tree already down and hauled away and then the trimmed trunk of the second follows.

Losing these tall ash trees really bothered me. On hot summer days I enjoyed sitting in the shade beneath them and occasionally enjoying fresh watermelon pieces that Kie would bring out to me.

As the following reveals, I'm not the first person to be annoyed over losing shade trees... but I was nowhere near as angry.

"Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left - and also much cattle?”

(Jonah 4:6-11)

Yes! The same Jonah who was swallowed by the great fish was angry about losing a shade providing plant.

About an hour later... pieces that did not end up here in the wood pile were very efficiently chewed into chips.

Free very good quality firewood for the taking. 

During the day passing vehicles would simply stop, load up with a few choice sticks and then drive away. That was the purpose for placing the wood there.

Every piece had disappeared within 24 hours.

Recorded a few years earlier, this image shows a felled healthy ash tree.

On this subject of very good firewood...

This ode to firewood that favours ash was in a display at the 2015 Farmington Fair.

The display at the Farmington Fair also highlighted the plight of the ash tree in North American. A deadly plague caused by that trouble-causing, illegal alien known as the emerald ash borer. 

Ash trees are dying off, much like the way native chestnut trees first and then followed by elm trees more than a century earlier.

Will the common ash tree be able to survive?

The Oddblock Station Agent