The tree that almost killed me.

Well at least this is whats left.  Back on the 19th of December I woke on a cold windy morning to see her leaning towards my neighbors house.  The tree had been in an active process of dying for going on to two years now, but this particular morning I could hear her death rattle.  I real sense of urgency, really panic hit me in that I was afraid of the damage it might cause by falling.  I could see the roots coming up and the chair that hung from it leaned drastically to one side.  The wind was howling and it seemed as though time was of the essence, it needed to be cut down now.
Through the years when things like this happen to me, I just do it.  When an engine goes bad and needs to be rebuilt, I pick up a book and learn how then I do it.  Now the tree needs to come down and it needs to come down now.  So I borrow a chainsaw from a friend and, I just do it.  Through the years this has been a process that has taught me all the things I know.  I can torch down a flat roof.  I can weld a rolling gate. I can pull an engine out of a junkyard car, rebuild it and use it in another. cutting down this tree was no exception,  In fact it taught me some of the most important lessons in my life. One minute I'm hanging happily with a motorized chain of destruction, the next Im on the ground fighting for my life.  Both bones in my left leg were crushed by a swinging limb and an artery was severed.

Now, here she stands.  I planted her from a stick.  I saw this tree grow unlike any tree I have see in my past, within seven years of being planted it shaded my entire courtyard.  It is a corkscrew willow tree, they grow fast and then die.  I have actually had conversations with this  tree, sounds funny but when the tree was sick and dying I tried to talk it back to  life.  I'd tell it to fight and come back and she fought to her last dying breath.

Now back from the trenches together I live to see another day, and I will send her to the great beyond in a pile of ashes.