Flying Trees

I sent this picture here on the left out to friends yesterday.  It's a picture of a tree hanging in the air just outside our house.  Most people were unable to spot the barely perceptible line holding that tree branch in the air to a crane which in the picture managed to get cut out.  And kudos to niece Amy, who did spot it. Nothing escapes those eagle eyes.

My neighbor had a giant pine tree threatening to fall on her house, so she hired the tree people to take it down. A major major undertaking.  The roar of the saws and the crane truck made it pretty much impossible to concentrate on anything, so we figured, my spousal unit and I, we might as well go out and join the fun.

One by one the tree removers cut off giant limbs, like the one you see flying through the air. They then fed them into the chipper, which chopped them into tiny pieces in just seconds. When one truck was full, another truck took over.  It took me back in time.  I was a ten-year old again, transfixed by the power of machines.

same tree branch, a minute later,
about to go into the chipper

A big event.  Also one of those marvelous times when all the neighbors come out of their houses and talk with each other.

So thanks to my neighbor, Barbara.  I call it one of the social events of the winter season.

Friend David in Japan commented on how blue the sky was.  I think that's largely a function of the camera lens. In real life it doesn't feel quite that overwhelmingly blue. 

But it is still very blue.

For days and days this last week and more we have had floods coming out of the sky.  I fully expected to see a pair of hippos, a pair of giraffes, a pair of kangaroos and a pair of wombats come strolling down the street heading for Noah's Ark, which must be loading somewhere nearby.  Rain of biblical proportions.  And it seems to have cleared out every last bit of pollution in the air for a while.  Hence the blue skies and wonderfully fresh country-smelling air.

Sorry to rub it in to all of you out there in snow-bound places, but we're sitting here with the patio doors open so the girls can run in and out and toast themselves in the sunshine after all these days of being imprisoned inside.

I love trees.  Maybe next only to dogs.  Certainly better than a lot of people I know, particularly in this nightmare time when we seem to be in the clutches of some really awful people throwing thirty million people off their health care insurance.  You know people will die because of this. And many more will go bankrupt. 

I hate to see trees cut down.

Just like I hate to see any dog, even an old or a rabid dog, put to sleep.

And I hate to see people with a twenty million dollar income have to have their income reduced to nineteen million dollars, so a million can go toward paying for health care of their fellow citizens earning one five-hundredth of that income.

So glad that wonderful team of tree removal experts were able to take a moment in time and create a world in which trees come flying through the air.  

And don't fall on my house or my car.

How great is that!?