If a tree falls in the forest...

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

My love affair with trees may very well have started with this tree.

(I wonder if anyone else has a 'favorite' tree besides me?)

Back in 1960, my mom and dad moved us from the city to a small town (comparatively speaking).

The day we moved into our new home, while mom and dad were busy arranging furniture and getting the house in order and whatnot, I discovered this monstrous pine tree way down in the backyard. I was mesmerized. Being the (somewhat) adventuresome type back them, I promptly started to climb it. Now being only 8 years old at the time, it seemed as though I was very high up in the tree, although I'm sure I wasn't. But I soon discovered that it was much easier going up than it was coming down. I finally set myself down on a huge branch of the tree and hollered for what seemed like forever for my dad to come and help me get down.

Of course since everybody was inside the house with the business of moving day, nobody heard me. So I finally stopped hollering and just enjoyed being surrounded by country sights and trees rather than traffic. I think this was the day I fell in love with trees.

Lord knows, I certainly enjoy painting them...

... and I'm very fond of using tree quotations in my artwork as well...

So I was very sad to see that a major portion of the first tree I ever loved, the one my dad eventually rescued me from so many years ago, succumbed to some wind damage a few weeks ago.

We'd had "tornado watch" alerts that evening, but the winds never did amount to much of anything.

So I was quite shocked to find this section of the tree down when I visited my sister the day after the warnings.

When the pine branch, which was the size of a tree itself, came crashing down, it also took out a multi-trunked cherry tree.

The massive branch that broke was the very one I sat on for hours while making friends with this tree. Right behind this tree are overgrown wetlands that abut the backyard, but back in the 60's, it was a pasture with a few horses and cows. I really fell in love with the country that day.

We called in a tree company that has done work for us in the past. Unfortunately, the news was not good. The massive branch that came down left a gaping hole in the tree. The fact that branches had been dying off for a while, and the fact that the tree had multiple LARGE trunks made it very susceptible to future breakage. They suggested that for safety's sake, the entire tree come down, not just the branch that broke off.

So it was with great sadness that I watched this scene unfold from my dad's dining room window today.

Piece by piece, the large crane hoisted sections of the tree through the air, and eventually into the wood chipper.

It felt like I was saying goodbye to a dear old friend.

And at the end of the day, this is all that remained o the multi-trunked cherry tree that had been leveled by the pine bough...

And this is what remains of my most vivid memory of the first day we moved into our new home in 1960.

I suspect I'll be honoring my old friend in a future painting...

I'm joining Claudia at Mockingbird Hill Cottage for her weekly "My Favorite Thing" party. Please pop over and post about one of your favorite things! I'm also linking to Cindy's My Romantic Home for Show & Tell Friday.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

COMMENT UPDATE: I had no idea how many of you would relate to my tree story! Claudia, I knew you would because of your beautiful willow tree. Sandra, my mother and you are kindred spirits. When the realtor was showing my mom & dad a house (with not a single tree on the property), in the brand new neighborhood they were thinking of buy into, my mother was eyeing the house across the street the whole time because of the yard full of trees. She finally said, "If the house across the street is still available, that's the one we want to buy." Sight unseen. And, of course, that was the house where so many wonderful memories were made, including this one about the first tree I ever climbed. Thank you, Mom :)

Donna