Dinosaur :)

This little maple tree that I don't know the name of has been a happy landmark for me for at least 30 years. The tree is older than that as I only met it fully grown. The family that originally owned this home must have worked quite a while to train it into a dinosaur along with the evergreen T Rex that you can just see peeking from behind on the right.

Throughout the years, this house has changed owners many, many times. And each time I have watched with hope that the new owners would continue the lives of these two citizens of this corner. And my hope has always been rewarded as new hands and clippers have painstakingly worked to maintain the shapes, some with more skill than others, some more diligently than others, but all have appreciated these two and protected this one and his eternally green friend. Even the city, who bring machines to dig and replace telephone poles and to repair the phone lines after a storm, have treated these with deference and not hacked them into oblivion.

I have driven my children down this street countless times to visit their friends and now that they are grown I continue to pass twice daily as I pick up and return Philip to his home after tutoring. I always look at them, evaluate their health and wish them well each time with gratitude that they, like me, are surviving aging.

Across from the dinos and a few houses up there was a magnificent variegated holly tree that was my favorite tree of all. It, too, stood on a corner and in the middle of November the owners would bedeck it tip to soil in small white lights which illuminated the year's crop of deep red berries and made resplendent the soft golden yellow of the variegation against the dark green on the leaves. Though I knew it was there and what to expect, it never ceased to take my breath away with each magical viewing. The owners have grown much older since they first began this delightful marking of winter's nearing and last year decided they were not up to the task any longer. The tree was removed one day while I was at work and now pumpkins and dahlias grow in this bed, requiring no acrobatics or ladders to maintain. And I mark it, in my heart, as a commentary on my busy life that I didn't know, that I never stopped to ask if help would be useful, that I never told them how much their effort rewarded my soul. But I visit that tree in my memory often and am so grateful to have known it.