What a Difference a Day Makes

“What A Difference A day makes
24 Little hours
From the sun and the flowers
Where there used to be rain.”

Well, what a difference.  Yesterday the large tree that overlooked the back courtyard and bugged me with falling leaves, stood keeping light and what sunshine there is at this time of the year, away from the back of the house.

I saw a man working on a tree across the road and asked him to look at chopping my tree.  Incidentally, he told me it was a sycamore tree, not a plane tree as I have been calling it.

He took one look and said he could chop it right back but would leave some of it there as in all probability it was holding up the bank.  He gave me a very reasonable quote to chop it back, remove all the debris and also remove much of the German ivy that was trailing across the bank killing other things that had been planted there by an earlier inhabitant of this house.  And he could do it right away.

Well, all things considered, it was an offer to good to pass up.  So he set to work.  He told me that by chopping it back the tree wouldn’t be killed but would grow again.  He said in 20 years that it would probably be as big again.  Of course, I then told him that was OK as I wouldn’t be around then.

Before the rain set in he had the ivy removed and the tree partly chopped back.  When the rain stopped he cleared all the mess he had made and transported it off in his trailer.

What a lucky thing that I was home in the morning to see him working across the street.

This morning there was no rain and the sun shone giving extra light into my kitchen.  And there are very few leaves in the courtyard today.

So tomorrow I have only to tidy the courtyard, replace the dead plants in the planter boxes and wait for ‘the man’ to come back and finish the tree lopping.

“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning
of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well
he will never sit. ”
D. Elton Trueblood, 1900 – 1994,  American Quaker author and theologian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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