I am sad. Today they chopped down my favorite tree. Someone decided to clean up one of the many vacant buildings surrounding us. They hired a crew of Haitian laborers, who lived on the premise until all the trash was removed, until every tree had been cleared. It took them almost two weeks.
The last thing to go was my tree. It provided shade for our apartment building, but was technically growing on the other side of the fence. It had three huge trunks growing up from different places. It had the most beautiful, full leaves. I prayed that God would rescue my tree. I don't think I’d ever prayed for a tree before, but it seemed like such a shame to take out one of the few mature, gorgeous trees on our block.
They tried to cut it down on Friday and couldn’t do it with their machetes. I celebrated. They returned the next week with bigger machetes and down it fell. I saved some of the leaves and put them in a vase on our table. I will miss its large leaves swaying in the wind outside my window. I will miss the red woodpecker who lived in the tree (even though he ruined the wooden shutters on our bedroom balcony). By some miracle, the chicken living in the lot next door managed to survive.
Since the “clearing” nothing else has happened. The building is up for sale and it could be years before it sells. Now we get to look at an ugly cleared lot instead of an overgrown little forest, which managed to bring beauty into our lives despite the mounds of garbage it more or less covered up.
