Change is in the air, and Trees are Falling

A long awaited change is taking place at the Heilman Home-- our driveway trees are gone. At first glance during our initial viewing of our home to be the were just a curiosity, easily dismissed as the neighbor's responsibility. But once we were the new home owners our new neighbors quickly disavowed any claim to the trees. They were roughly hewn with jagged scars painted over with yellow paint, but spring came and covered all disfigurement with fluffy clouds of white blooms. We spent that first spring inside painting and claiming the house as ours, leaving the yard to rest and tell us it's story. Next spring as soon as the weather warmed up and our house was overflowing with guests and cats, I began to spend a great deal of time in the yard. It's story began to read to me as a jarring haphazard assortment of storylines with no order. The trees got a few trims as they began to sprout out new growth and their yellow scabs faded a little with time. But those blooms reeked, and those trees sprouted millions of baby trees, and war ensued. The on going battle to halt their encroachment via spreading limbs, rapid proliferation of little minions, and their bedeviling bombardment of permantly adherring rotten fruit. There were casualties. But elsewhere liriope was quickly dug out and reset into pleasing sinous lines. Hostas were easily massed and replanted into pleasingly lush beds (sadly lasting only one year before comitting mass suicide to escape devouring slugs). Daffodils and tulips planted for the much needed early herald of spring (the daffodils march on but the tulips went to the slugs and squirrels). There was the mulch saga the ended with the most luscious vegtable beds and park like trails. And now after much despair and blisters, the driveway trees have been slain. I only hope they haven't left a final bombardment of treelings, but even that I will happily face with the satisfaction of knowing it will be the last.

Goodbye my arch foe.