The Queen is Dead

Every life must, inevitably, come to an end. For our majestic silver maple, which took such a beating in last year’s ice storm, that end came this week. I had tried so hard to bend reality to my denial, refusing to entertain the hideous notion that the Queen had to go. Once tall and proud, Her Majesty had become a doddering old dowager, given to shedding her limbs in a most untoward fashion.

Silver maples grow tall and full very fast, faster than they should. Unlike her slower-growing neighborhood peers, the Queen was never destined for longevity. And like many girls forced to grow up too fast, she did not age gracefully. While her trunk was sturdy, her largest branches were hollow and her smallest were frequent casualties to the wind that comes sweeping down our plains.

I did not know her in her youth–the Queen was a stately old matron when she came into my possession. But the past year has really aged her. Even though the ice storm was unavoidable, it saddens me that it happened on my watch; that I could do nothing to protect her. She just could not bounce back from such a devastating blow. The Queen had to be felled, to be put down.

One more winter could have seen her topple over, finally, onto the House. As much as I loved the Queen, I love the House of the Burning Prairie that much more.

It is quite a bit of work to take down a 50-year old silver maple; luckily there are people who do just such a thing for a living! So I farmed out the onerous task of taking the Queen down, as well as two other, less majestic trees that had suffered the same damage, to people who know what they are doing.

The Queen came down in uneasy stages. The first day all of her still-leafy branches were cut away. Then on the second day, her trunk was cut into more manageable pieces. Those more manageable pieces are still quite large and are now sitting at the curb, waiting to be hauled away. Her branches, however, were cut and stacked in the back yard, where they will stay, seasoning, until spring. While those branches will no longer shade the House from the summer sun, they will warm our House next winter.

I think the old girl would be pleased.