A stupid tree couldn’t take the heat anymore and came crashing down on my hosta bed, the centerpiece of which was my bird bath in the style of a tree trunk. It was a birthday present from my children to mark my 40th birthday. I loved it so much – I can’t believe I can’t put my finger on a picture of it at the moment. Here’s the now-squashed bird that sat in the center of it:
This is not the original birthday bird. The original one was leaner and more realistic. It held a little round thing in it’s pointy beak. I always thought it was a stone and that it represented Aesop’s fable about the crow that dropped pebbles into a water pitcher until the water level rose high enough for the crow to drink from it. Which was pretty damned sophisticated for something from the K Mart garden center. The original crow was a victim of harsh winter weather. It always fell over sideways when the water froze and that happened once too often. This bird never fell over but look how things ended up. You cannot change your destiny.
The whole thing was like a little petrified tree. The bowl was like a cross-cut of the tree trunk – you can see the “rings” and the “splits” in it here. Can you see the thick bark around the edges? The outside of the bowl and the entire base was realistically patterned to look like bark.
Ah me. I was just thinking this week that I was going to get rid of all the plants on the far side of the deck and move the birdbath over there to be a focal point in front of a curved line of Sunny Knock Outs. Life, eh? We make plans and God laughs.
stupid tree
That’s a shame. But don’t think harshly of the tree. Trees don’t have access to the meds to help them deal with anxieties and neuroses like we do, so when it all becomes too much for them, they just up and Goodbye-Cruel-World it. Squirrels, armadillos and opossums do the same thing but without so much collateral damage.
Sad. I mourn with you.
Let’s have some sympathy for the tree, standing there for decades providing blossoms in the spring, shade in the summer and much needed raking exercise in the fall.
No sympathy here for the freakish tree which sought to destroy.
Mourning the birdbath with you. Maybe we could take up a collection for either a new bath or a good chainsaw.
There seems to be many things which are breaking your heart these days. Be of good cheer, dear lady. Here is a pretty song I like:
At least you got to dismember the offender. Small consolation, but still…
You can never trust those trees, can you.
We got one with all the classic warning signs… it’s a giant expired something-or-other in a neighbor’s yard. Looks too tall and straight to be your typical oak: they tend to go for width and volume. It’s been dropping ever-larger hunks of itself into my driveway for about a year. Said neighbor has scheduled a controlled dismantling, but I only hope the tree is patient enough to go through with it, instead of coming down all at once – because depending on how it falls, someone’s house is gonna get demolished.
Oh dear. Sorry for your loss…