Negative Windfall

The sky out my bedroom window has always been fissured by tree limbs. Bare, budding or leafed out, in any season for 37 years I have been captivated by the view. Sometimes, watching the wind whip the limbs around, the thought did occur to me that someday this tree is going to kill me as I lay in bed.

And now the latest windstorm has left the sky empty. A major limb broke and crashed at an angle that fortunately avoided the house and my bed completely. It didn’t even damage the birdbath. Still, my version of Irving Berlin’s ‘Nothing But Blue Skies’ is a dirge.
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Our shade garden under the tree will be getting a sunshine shock. And speaking of shocks, though the wires were pulled down and held under the fallen limb the power never went off. The workers wielding chain saws had to plan their attack extremely precisely in this dangerous, live-wires-down situation.

Worker assessing the approach, wire under limb.

These tree guys are incredibly competent. It’s a fraught scenario – the limb has pulled down the wires and they are taut and ready to spring up when released. One slip of the saw and the guy with the chainsaw is toast! Why Toronto had not ‘underground’ the wires is my question. Two tree-removal guys in Milton did die while clearing a tree downed as a result of this storm.

When the delicate work of releasing the wire is done, the limb could be removed.

A formerly majestic, century-old Norway maple became wood chips. Tragic.

Within an hour the garden was cleared.

Now we wait. An arborist has come by while we were out, and the tree’s fate seems to have been decided already.

We will argue against this kiss of death. Half a tree will still sequester carbon, produce oxygen, fight climate change, fracture our view of the sky… worth keeping.