Then, ten years later, my husband decided to build a second shed, and the space he chose was right where the sculpture stood, so he managed, with the help of a few neighbours to move the sculpture forward to another spot entirely, and the Junipers were left in place, the shed built in front of them. Over the succeeding years the two trees gradually declined.
One had grown considerably taller than its twin, and it was the taller one that died finally, with the second, shorter one, still presenting a bit of green, mostly hidden by the shed. What we could see plainly, was the dead Juniper backgrounding the shed and it didn't look attractive.
So on Saturday my husband decided he would begin the process of taking them both down. He began by cutting off the branches progressively, to the naked, dead trunk. And he had to shove a ladder into a most inconveniently close spot, between the back of the shed and where the trees had grown. One of our neighbours who lives behind twice over us on another street shouted out to my husband that he was coming right over with some useful tools.
Good as his word, he drove over and brought along with him rope and a few saws of his own. Between the two of them they maneuvered the trunk to fall in a direction that spared the side of the shed and much else, including our Corkscrew Hazel, growing back of and between the two of our sheds, at the foot of our rock garden.
And so, the deed was done, the two trees, one now dead, the other swiftly declining, have been removed, no longer an eyesore. It took quite a while to chop up the branches and the trunks into manageable sizes for disposal and pick-up by the municipality for their gigantic composting program, but when all was finished it was a job well done.
Jack and Jill thought it was great fun to grab small pieces of branch to run off with their prizes and chew to their little hearts' content.
And my husband, that night, was one tired-to-exhausted fellow.
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