RIP To My Favorite Tree
When we moved into our apartment last summer I was immediately smitten with this big, sad locust tree between our driveway and the neighbor's property. The tree was dead and fully covered in the invasive bittersweet vines I've written about before. Bittersweet was pulling the tree down giving it a weary lean. I think parts of the tree had already broken off at some point. The tangled vines and the lean gave the tree so much character. It was the first thing I saw when I opened the door in the morning and it was the first thing I would see when I entered the driveway. I photographed it many times.
We had a bad storm this weekend. It dumped heavy snow that made all the trees in the area bow and strain. Then we had mixed rain and snow with temperatures hovering around freezing followed by wind and more heavy snow. All of these ingredients formed a pretty serious tree-killing concoction. On Saturday night we heard the sound of trees cracking and branches falling every couple of minutes. We had the kids sleep in our room since there's another locust tree behind our house directly above the kids' room, also pretty sad with braces on it. That tree made it through the night, my favorite tree didn't.
I feel pretty bad about the loss of this tree, even though it was already dead when I met it. Attachment and loss is pretty weird like that, right? Our attachment to things, people, etc. is never actually about true nature of the thing. Don't @ me, bro.
Here are some of my favorite shots of the tree from the 6 months I've known it.
In happier news It's been a fun week with a freshly birthday'd 5 year old. I tried to get a proper birthday portrait of him but my son is just too squirmy so here are some goofy pictures instead.
