Wicked Twister

Something is definitely not right...

This is what I thought when I motored up the driveway a few weeks ago. The sun was just breaking through the horizon as Noah and I headed to the babysitter's house/work.

Through the glinting sunshine was this image:



That's the front of our yard. But where there used to be two bushy, full tree tops are now two tilted sticks. Is it just me, or does it look like a tornado barreled its way through our front yard and stripped everything in its path?

I know that's not the case. Some friendly fellows from the power company knocked on my door a few weeks ago to ask if it was okay if they "trimmed" some large trees and perhaps even "took down" a few others to make room for the electric wires.

At the time, I didn't think much about it. Sure, chop away! We have hundreds of trees. I can't imagine we need them all.

But what I came home to were two half-naked trees where we once had stately, grand giants that flanked the entry to our "estate" and provided a good measure of privacy. Further up the tree line, what had been a flowering young tree, green and round, is now a flat-top stump. It looks terrible... but you can't tell from this picture because of the dozens of trees behind it (look closely, you can see where they buzzed off the main trunk at the top).



I suppose the electric company would tell us that if we were concerned about aesthetics, we would have trimmed the trees ourselves. And they probably would have reminded me that in late fall in 2006, when I was pregnant and exhausted, I came home on an unseasonably chilly day in late evening to find that the wind had snapped a tree branch from its trunk and sent it sailing into the power line that feeds electricity to our house. That day, I had no power, and I was spooked out in my house and chilled to the bone. The power guys came out and re-hung the line right away, so I think they'd tell me now, "You owe us."

They're probably right. But I still feel bad for the trees that look so silly now. And for my family, who lives in the home with the awkward foliage. Double bummer.