Trees

I have been thinking a lot about trees.

Growing up in the high desert, I really wasn't used to a lot of trees.

When we moved to Louisiana, there were trees everywhere. It was beautiful. Most of them were evergreens and there wasn't much change throughout the year. Still pretty, but after awhile kind of boring.

Coming here, the trees were pretty exciting. Tree-lined streets almost every street you drove down. Beautiful, tall trees in my very own back yard (and front yard too, although not as cool as the back yard trees).

I love fall here because everywhere you go there are beautiful colors to see. It's even fun to clean up the fallen leaves (to a certain extent...even that after awhile gets pretty tedious).

Last week hurricane Sandy brought us a lot of wind. I had a fitful night of not much sleep listening to the wind howl and worrying about my trees.

What if a branch falls?

What if a whole tree falls?

What if it falls into the street and causes an accident?

What if it falls on the neighbor's house and hurts someone?

Is it tall enough that if it falls this direction it would hit our house?

Will we get sued?

Would homeowner's insurance cover it?

How much would it cost to take the trees out or seriously trim them?

And on and on.

Our trees made it through just fine. They are strong trees, even though to me they look like they are leaning a bit. We really should have an expert come and check them out for safety, and yet with so many other things to pay for that seems to get bumped WAY down the list. I'd like more trees. I'd like the trees I have to be trimmed and healthy. I'd like to be able to sleep through heavy wind without worrying about a tree falling.

Yesterday, we spent the morning volunteering for the yard cleanup with the United Way in our community. Last year, our ward participated for the church-wide service day. I had to work that day, but Dee and the kids seemed to enjoy it so I signed us up this year.

We had 3 homes to take care of. It ended up only being 2 because we had 17 people in our group and we split up. We ended up doing one of the yards by ourselves with just our family and our friend Mary who was spending part of the weekend with us. We helped an older lady who had just gotten out of the hospital. She said the wind actually did a really good job of cleaning up the leaves and that there wasn't a whole lot to do. Even with a pretty "cleaned-up" yard it still took us awhile, and while it was fun (and SUPER COLD) I kept thinking trees are such a pain! You sit and worry about the trouble they will cause and then every single year you have to clean up all of this mess, and then they look kind of ugly for a couple of months....and on and on.

And then it hit me. Trees are a lot like kids. We worry about them and the damage they might cause to themselves or others. We appreciate their beauty, positive contributions, and yet at the first sign of trouble we sit and stew over how we can "fix" them. Even just their maintenance without even really fixing anything is seen as kind of a pain sometimes. They are expensive.

Yet, they are beautiful, and we wouldn't trade them for the world, would we?