Tree Chopping

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Apr 242010
 

One of my blog buddies recently posted about the decorative trees around her apartment being cut down. It makes the apartments look really stark and ugly.

It reminds me of a tree I used to climb as a kid. We rented a house that had a big old tree in the front yard, with several large, low-hanging branches that made it perfect for climbing.

Seems one year the landlord got it into his head to have the tree trimmed, and had someone come around and cut off all the lovely low-hanging branches. After that I couldn’t climb my tree any more. It made me sad to see my poor tree disfigured, and I sometimes fancied it missed having kids climb it.

I’ve never understood this desire to make trees resemble a child’s drawing. I’m especially irked by a recent trend in my area of planting magnolias as decorative border trees, and then trimming their lower branches so they look more like spruces or birch. Magnolias tend to have a lot of low-hanging branches, usually right down to the ground. They just don’t look right to me with all their lower branches hacked off.

Bear