Windswept]
Now I actually own land and trees and the occasional wilting peony, I've developed a fond attachment for stuff that grows. Most recently, I have found myself, on summer afternoons, fighting a intellectual tussle as to the proper amount of attention one should lavish on a lawn. Too little, and it looks like a desert. Too much, and that's just not an appropriate way for an adult to spend his time.
In the middle of our property is a gnarled and aging apple tree that's probably twice as large as it should be. I don't think it had been pruned for years until this spring when I gave it a dramatic haircut. This year, not all the apples were mutant, but rather too many came out with unsightly bulges. Remaining solid were the four trunks growing out of the base, each heading toward its own compass point.
That was until last night. The 50 mph winds knocked out the power for 12 hours, sent limbs from the uselessly soft fir trees tumbling into the road and cleaved my poor apple tree in half. Two trunks are still standing. Two are lying forlornly across the lawn, barely joined at the base to their former cousins. It looks a bit rotten in there and no doubt it's only a matter of time before the rest of it falls down.
Neither it, nor its apples, had a story to tell as far as I was aware. Adam didn't partake of its lumpy fruit, which also didn't fall on the head of any budding physicists. No arrows were shot through them. No poisoned examples were given to proto-princesses. But it was my tree, to which I had lavished at least a small amount of care, and I am annoyed.
Minor consolation: It will replenish the firewood we ran through last night trying to prevent our children turning into popsicles. (Photos TK when I find a second to run outside during daylight.)
Makes me think Of my Cherry tree I lost last year, when the big fir tree that fell split it in half. Not that we ever ate many of the pie cheries off it. The birds got most of them. But, like you, there is a bright spot to it, I now have alot less bird poo all over the property, I think they have gone somewhere else to foriage.