The Cherry Tree

In the spring the ornamental Cherry tree in my garden looked beautiful - covered in blossom but the rest of the year it was a pain - casting long large shadows over my tiny garden, covering the lawn with cherries and pips when they ripen -birds rarely eat them and the fallen pips wreck the lawn mower and then in the autumn cover the garden with leaves. It also caused a nuisance to my neighbours along the foot path (side and back) with cherries and leaves falling. If the cherries were edible I would have vast stocks of cherry jam but they were not edible. So....Yesterday afternoon it looked like this..... and seen from one of the upstairs windows you can see just how big it was for my tiny garden....then oh no ...it looked like this and half an hour later - what no tree?? Yep my 82 year old (!) dad came over and together we chopped it down! Scary holding a ladder for dad when he insisted on sawing high branches - stretching up from the top rung of the ladder. Although he looks old and frail he is as fit as a flee - definitely fitter than most people I know!! I know it's sad to cut down a tree but now the rest of the garden has sunlight back - the lilac has relaxed rather than being squashed by the branches - you could hardly see it before and the very rare visiting birds will still have plenty of other places to rest and stuff to eat. In the meantime the trunk and branches are part chopped and ready to dry out in the garage so that my daughter can burn them on her open fire in the winter. The leaves and cherries were bagged up for dad to take to his composting bins - so none of it is wasted. Shame the cherries were not edible or it would still be here.