Trees

Twenty seven years ago a lady I worked with brought me a couple of acorns that had sprouted roots in her gutter. I planted them without much expectations, and didn't realize they would grow as fast and big as they did.

The acorns quickly became mighty oak trees hanging over the house. They also became a nuisance dropping leaves and acorns all winter long in the gutters and basement steps and a potential hazard with limbs breaking in storms. So we cut them down. 

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It took us three days to deliver 4 pickup loads and 4 trailer loads of firewood to a friend and to pile up a mountain of limbs and leaves in the sinkhole. The whole experience has been bittersweet watching them grow for 27 years and enjoying their shade. They had worn treefaces and halloween decorations. They had housed birds and squirrels. They had played games of tag and hide and seek. Now they are stumps to hold lawn ornaments. There are no leaves or falling limbs or shade. And such is 27 years of our lifes (us and the trees).