Change of scenery

 A young man knocked on the front door about a week ago. I live in a place where front doors are used as an emergency exit if at all. We have had the occasional trick-or-treaters, a few times politicians trolling for votes, and once Jehovah witnesses. The Jehovah witnesses came round to the back subsequent times, although this past week, I got a letter in the mail from one of them witnessing to me. She mentioned she wasn't stopping door to door because of Covid. 

At any rate, I didn't recognize the young man at the door. He didn't look like a Jehovah witness. Turns out he wasn't. Nor was he a politician. He worked for an arborist. He wanted to let me know they were going to be taking down a neighbour's tree and because the tree was on or very close to the property line, they might have some of their equipment on my property. They wanted to let me know.

We chatted a bit, I went outside, and we walked the back yard. The tree is an old, large ash tree. It saddened me that they are removing it, solely because it's too close to their barn. He said the noise I'd hear would be their chain saws and a chipper. That saddened me, too. If you're taking down a tree simply  because its presence in its spot is inconvenient in some way, I'd hope you'd use the timber in a useful way. Not just all of it becoming instant mulch. Removing the ash tree will change the line of sight in our back yard a bit.

Yesterday, someone driving down the street ended up hitting a large tree in that neighbour's yard and struck a pedestrian who was walking on the sidewalk. We aren't sure why it happened. Whether a deer had run across the road or whether the driver lost control driving over wet leaves. There's a slight gash in the tree, but other than that, the tree looks as it always has. I do hope the injured man can make a full recovery. It gave us pause for thought. Any number of us use that sidewalk as we go for a walk, walk the dog (quite a few neighbours have dogs), or like our neighbour Vern, use it most days to walk down to the nearby post office to collect his mail.