Timber and Plenty of It

-a sampling of our majestic yet anxiety-provoking backyard treetops.

The howling wind that dominated Tuesday night and interrupted my sleep, reminded me of something ironic from a couple of years ago. Let me explain the situation before revealing the circumstantial irony. We live on a wooded property that is no stranger to soaring trees. How this land with 100 foot grandaddy trees could once support a small private airport, I have no idea? So anytime high winds race across the landscape, I fret about a tree leveling our house. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, it remains there for cleanup.

After moving into this home, there were a couple of trees closest to the house that we wanted to have cut down to shed direct sunlight on the wood deck. We were able to squirrel money aside for this purpose. I got contractors to come out to the house to give estimates. Recommendation after recommendation included additional suspect trees beyond my plan of correction with prices rivaling a king’s ransom. Wood you believe that I grossly underestimated the cost factor and what a labor intensive job it would be? The estimates for the work were beyond our picayune savings. There was something about the associated cost that forged my sense of conservation. I decided to leave the trees be for now. In fact, another year would pass before we finally contracted the job out. In a reshuffle of priorities, I used the nest egg of money to purchase new carpeting for our gymnasium, home to a few rarely used workout machines and a lonely shower. Sprucing up a home’s interior while ignoring the outdoor danger is counterintuitive. The same problem solving tactics damn an ostrich.

Be that as it may, the weather was inglorious on the day the carpet got delivered. The wind gusts whistling through tree branches exhausted my wind chime. This ostrich could care less about the wind with his head stuck in the sand. Two carpet installers carried the roll of carpet around back for a backdoor entry. As they lugged the carpet roll, I could not help but think of lumberjacks wrestling a tree trunk. I stood by the workers as keeper of their handsome tip. As they were lugging the carpet, one of the carpet guys looked towards the woods. My eyes followed his. Our eyes followed movement. We witnessed a tree falling in the woods. Only medium sized, the tree still landed with a whoosh sound and kicked up dead leaves in its wake.

“Did you see that?” asked the carpet installer to anyone who would listen.

I replied, “Ugh, I’m afraid so.”

“Timber! Yuk. Yuk.” cried the installer who did not see a thing.

“You better get somebody out here to take care of that?” overstated the witness to my nightmare.

“Know any lumberjacks for hire?” I chuckled.

The morale of the story is that sometimes an ostrich needs the very sand hiding his head to quake before dealing with an issue head on.