The Trees

I used to quite seriously love trees. I'm pretty good at identifying and naming trees: birch, black walnut, oak, maple, willow, poplar, and so on. When I was younger I saw trees as mostly silent, except in the fall when they would shine in a blazing glory of reds, oranges, golds, greens and purples. I bought a house surrounded by trees and one of my favorite sounds was listening to the wind whoosh through their branches.

But now trees scare me. They are very loud. I have nightmares about them.

Yes, these are the trees that have crashed through our house over the past eight years. I re-read JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", especially the parts about the Ents and the attack on Isengard....hmm. I read Peter Wohllenben's "The Hidden Life of Trees". I stressed out about Global Warming and what messages the trees were sending. I made Craig go to a lecture about talking and communicating with trees.

And then I hired an Arborist, Zeb Stricklen. And his best, very educated guess on what was happening in our back yard: Emerald Ash Borer.

The Emerald Ash Borer loves Ash trees...thus their name. They lay their eggs under the bark and the larvae feed underneath the bark. Once the insect lay their eggs, the ash tree will be dead within two to three years. Zeb found five trees in our yard that were infected and threatening to come down on the house. I talked with the neighbors and scheduled Limbwalkers Tree Co to take down the trees.

Unfortunately they were unable to get to it before the next crash happened (see post: Where is God in All of This?).