Way down at the bottom of the Laguna garden is a grove of eucalyptus trees, two of which are silver dollar eucalyptus, one of my favorite trees. This is a picture taken eight years ago and you can see the one in the center of the photo has a definite "lean" to it. it has been this way since we moved in and it gives it a lot of character and makes for a good tree to climb and sit on. Hawks, peregrines, and many other birds frequent these branches. These trees have held up many hammocks over the years, still hold up odd little bird houses that were occupied again this spring, and ten years ago I had a stage build between them where a blues band played in the afternoon while the audience sat on the grassy knoll for my DH's birthday party.
It had been a few years since I had the tree trimmers over to do any maintenance on them and when I went down to check the trees out before I had them come to do the trimming, the large silver dollar eucalyptus had grown and reached way up, covering most of the hillside! I was shocked at how large it was. It rained that weekend and unfortunately by the time the tree trimmers came later that week the large tree had fallen over, pulling up some of the roots out of the ground. If only I had been a few weeks earlier getting my act together!
It really broke my heart because I love this tree so much, so we decided to trim it back and just kind of leave it and see what happens. It really can't go anywhere and it isn't hurting anything, having landed on the open space on the hillside. So if it lives it will make an interesting tree sculpture and a good place for kids to climb next summer. If it doesn't make it, we'll have firewood for many winters to come, but I will really miss it.
And so will the birds I suspect.
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