Surgery.....

Don't panic though....it's not on a person or pet.....

When my mum was young she planted a cherry tree seed in her garden. that seed grew into a beautiful cherry tree and now many years late that tree still stands in the garden of the house in which my Dad now resides.

This was my childhood home and that tree has always stood grandly by the gate.....it was a climbing frame for us as children and held branches from which we had swings made for us. it has always given us a spectacular show of colour every spring as the blossoms emerged. It offered us wonderful shade during the heatwaves that often came and leached the grass to a dry yellow in the summers that followed. We had so much fun in the leaf piles that came every autumn as the tree caught fire with wonderful autumn colours and during the snowfall of winter is was great to watch the tree glisten in the sunlight whilst covered with snow.

It holds many wonderful memories for us but this year it was again making a bid for the house and looking a little unruly so phonecalls were made in order to tame it a little.

So with all these memories you can imagine how we felt when the tree surgeon came and said the tree may have to come down. Apparently the last people to come and trim the tree did so badly, leaving knots where they shouldn't be left so that water has sat and seeped into the trunk over the years and started to rot the tree.

Right now we are left with this,

Cherry tree reaching for the sun.

It really is a shadow of it's former self. I think I took the photo from the wrong angle but you get the idea. The tree surgeons cut out all of the bad wood and they are hoping that the tree will now be able to repair itself over the next summer. As you can imagine we really don't' want the tree to go.

The bark is so beautiful with such
 interesting fissures.

When you stand back you
get the full beauty of the
majestically twisting trunk.

Such a beautiful tree and such a big part of our lives has us hoping that it can fully recover from the rot and once again flourish in the sun.

A lot of wood was removed and I did ask the guys if they could leave me a few of the larger logs as I thought they would be goof for a habitat on the bee plot...

Cherry tree logs.

I don't think they really grasped the concept of 'a few'. but no worries...it will just take a few more trips than I anticipated to get them to the allotment......at least this way no matter what happens i will always get to keep a part of the tree close.