There are many lovely things about chez grouch, but one underappreciated aspect is that most of the trees overhanging our yard are actually growing in other people’s yards. This means that they own the leaves and so have to rake them.

At least that’s my argument.

The one tree actually growing in our yard is a sugar maple.

It provides shade to the chickens and lots of maple seedlings for the mower. Alas, it has been in poor health for some time. As seen below much of the bark on one side has been damaged, many limbs have fallen off and it barely flowered this year. When the leaves finally did bread their buds, they were a few weeks later than the other trees. Note that in the image below the tree behind it has a full canopy.

So our friendly wood chip provider agreed to turn it into woodchips for me in about two hours.

I’m being flippant because that’s what I do, but I really didn’t like the idea of cutting it down. After last year’s storms it seemed very possible that big pieces of the tree could come down on the garage or on the indigent boarders room.

We took the necessary actions.

I keep expecting the Lorax to pop up and start threatening me.

This young lady is non-plussed.

Some apple trees and a needed expansion of the chicken run are in the planning stages.