Trees

When we moved into our dome home eleven years ago it was shrouded in seventy foot Eucalyptus trees. The shade was grand until, with an eerie twisting crack and a popping voomp, one soaring monster toppled to the ground in our front yard. Was this tree fatigue? The trimmer that came to remove the Australian windbreak lying at our doorstep called them “Widow makers!” as he eyed the fifteen trees still standing. When I asked about the cost of removing all, he just mumbled “Missed the house, huh?” Was he hinting at a future deadly drop? Did we really want to know?

Narrow View Down

We didn’t call for permits. We didn't ask the agriculture department. We just paid the man to take them away. He left behind ten giants lining the horse pens farther down hill. And so the house baked in the sun but was safe from timber, and we had a view! Not the straightforward look downhill to the main highway where truckers roar by and trains chug past. Taking out the trees added a broad slice of the eastern horizon and the grandest outlook over Home Acres. Everybody who came up our hill ogled at it on their drive by's. We even got notes on our front door that read, “Thanks for the view.” 

Wide Open View

 

We replaced our missing watershed with drought resistant bushes that grew fast on the yard’s adjacent easement. We might have settled in comfortably, except for recurring nightmares that one of the ten remaining giant Eucalyptus' would kill a horse. At tax return time we hired day laborers to dispatch the trees below. We watched the wiry little guys climb high and whack away with machetes, dropping branch after branch. It took six men to haul on the heavy rope that took down heavy main beams. And when all the trees lay in chunks on the ground, the foreman motioned to us, “Look.” We followed him from stump to stump as he poked his machete into their centers. “Murio,” he said. “Trees is dead. That why they fall.” Then he and his men stacked the logs along the edge of the yard to save us the dumping costs.

Drought Resistant Bushes

 Postsript: Weeks went by. Neighbors waved. Strangers smiled. A local road grader chugged up in his cat and stopped. “Eucalyptus burns long and hot,” he said, eying the logs. “I sell firewood. How much d’you want for them?”

“Can you grade us a riding ring for the horses in exchange?”

“Be glad to do it.” He grinned, revved the engine, and rumbled down the yard to grade.