Timber!

Newsletter 2021-08-08

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I don’t know, but when one comes down in front of your house, it’s pretty loud.

I’ve been rooting for this particular tree to fall for a long time, preferably in a controlled manner in a direction away from my house. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not anti-tree. I’m not pro-tree, either. I’ve been pretty ambivalent about nature ever since I suffered through all those Boy Scout campouts in junior high and high school. I’ll shoot myself in the foot before I let myself get drafted into another winter jamboree. But my trees have been dying for a very long time, though not fast enough for my liking. The three on my property are all ashes, a fact I only know because somebody told me. My tree identification skills begin and end with, “Hey, that’s a tree.” Ash trees have a specific predator, the emerald ash borer, which is expected to kill 100 percent of the ash trees in the world. At some point, my tiny lot will be …