The Old Blue Spruce

    There it stood, sheltering the northwest corner of the house, separating the garage from the house, showering the lawn with fire-starting pine cones, shading the west window from hot afternoon suns. 

      For a while it even provided Christmas trees for the farm on the occasions when one was needed.  I would cut off a branch that was rubbing the house wall or roof, make a stand for it, and wrap it with lights.  It was satisfactory for three of us, providing the symbol, color and especially the smell of Christmas.  One of us found such “trees” tawdry, even referring to one as a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  Oh well.

    But those days are gone.  It has all come down to this:

Top and bottom.

    The transition didn’t happen overnight.  It went like this.

     One March day in 2014, I trimmed branches and fastened a chain around the trunk over half way up. 

     Other priorities emerged.  Finally, January of 2015, the day came. 

     The tree trunk, like most trees on the exposed plane, leaned to the east trained up by the prevailing west winds. 

      I didn’t trust my lumberjack skills to keep the tree from falling either to the garage or the house.  Thus the chain, and the “well” rope.

  

   I enlisted Neighborly to help.  His enthusiasm for something to do in January was tempered somewhat by upcoming surgery on his right knee.  His mobility was restricted, but he grabbed the chainsaw and whacked the top half of the initial wedge out.  Then he manned the Dakota while I finished the cut.

     The sadness of the day was overshadowed by the excitement of the potential danger.  The tree safely down (safely unless you were the unfortunate cedar bush under the spruce trunk), reflection replaced adrenalin.  While the tree will be sorely missed, it was a problem. 

     The spruce had an older sibling on the southwest corner of the house.  One calm summer Sunday afternoon in 1983, a gusting wind blew up suddenly out of the west and snapped the trunk of the southwest spruce.  Fortunately, it fell between the house and the juniper hedge and did little damage.

 1983 Photograph 

    After that event, always in the back of the mind, would another wind blow (is the Pope Catholic?—this is Eastern Colorado)?  Would the northwest tree go gently into that narrow gulch between garage and house?  The question is now moot.

      What once kept the house cool in the summer now heats it this winter.

    Neighborly counted 60 rings on the stump.  That would be about right.   I would have been about ten when we successfully planted it.

    The tree will be sorely missed.  Rest in peace old spruce.