On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
The neighbor in the back of us has this giant Maple tree that stands very close to our fence and actually leans toward our house and over our backyard. For two years now, that neighbor and I have discussed having this tree removed before it falls down because it is obviously dying. We spoke of splitting the cost, but the quotes were just a little high for either one of us to actually commit to having it done.
Carrie and I were very worried about this tree falling down due to the fact that it was obviously going to land in our backyard and we have five three-year-old fruit trees, three of which are in what we imagined was this tree’s trajectory should it ever fall.
Last Saturday night we had a windstorm with gale force winds. Sunday morning Carrie got out of bed before I did and took the dogs downstairs to let them outside. I heard her open the sliding glass door and almost immediately heard her yelling for Gabby to come back in the house. I knew something was wrong ,but was not concerned enough to get out of bed.
Carrie: Cough.
Carrie came back upstairs and told me that the tree had come down overnight. I jumped out of bed as any good husband would do, slid on my flip-flops, pulled on a t-shirt and went downstairs.
Low and behold, Carrie was correct. Half of our backyard was full of tree! Three of our stockade fence panels had been obliterated and more than likely at least two of our baby fruit trees had been flattened.
We both ventured into the yard to look for the fruit trees.
Miraculously, all three had survived the onslaught! They were all standing straight, jutting up through the tangled mass of branches and trunk like miniature cellphone towers. We couldn’t have been more happy or more proud of our little troopers. One did lose a couple of branches but all in all it was a small, early Christmas miracle.
We didn’t talk about it on social media because when so many in our country were dealing with major tornado damage last weekend, it didn’t feel right. But here is our tree.
Yesterday, with the help of the tree-owning neighbor and our trusty chainsaws, we cut that tree up and put it all in his yard. The price of the three fence sections that we have to replace will be well below our homeowner’s insurance deductible, so I am very happy.
What we thought was sure to be a small disaster actually turned out pretty well. We will have more sun for the garden during the summer, the fruit trees survived, the dangerous tree is gone and our neighbor was pretty darn spectacular with his chainsaw and made cutting up that huge tree a much faster and safer process than I could have done by myself.
You just have to always look for the positivity in the negativity. Often, the benefits outweigh the bad and you can make a bad situation a good one.
Live your life with a positive attitude, approach things with a less than worst-case scenario outlook and seek the good!
Also, remember to always Love Your Way Through It!
Peace,
Shaun
My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?
It’s a young adult novel (upper) called WHEN YOU BRING THEM BACK, please buy it!
It’s super fun.
