By June Mathews
There’s nothing quite so lovely as a majestic oak tree in all its autumn glory. The vibrant intermingling of reds and yellows with fading greens and encroaching browns makes for a palette only Mother Nature could apply with such flair.
But when that same oak monstrosity lies sprawled across your driveway, well, that’s a different story…
A few minutes after 6 a.m. this past Monday, Jimmie had just left for work – or so I thought – and I had hunkered back down under the covers, fully intending to catch another hour or two of sleep. When I heard him tromping back up the basement steps, I figured he’d forgotten something. Instead he had a bit of news to share.
“There’s a tree on my truck,” he announced, sounding amazingly calm, I thought, considering his prized pickup had possibly been smashed to smithereens sometime during the night.
Thus in my half-conscious state, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“Do what?” I asked in disbelief.
“A tree,” he repeated slowly, “on my truck.”
It finally sank in. A slow, steady rain beginning midday Sunday and continuing through the night had helped topple a tree we’d only recently talked about chopping down. How convenient was that?
So while Jimmie looked for the insurance company’s phone number, I got dressed and stepped outside onto the porch to survey the damage. Turns out it wasn’t so bad. One of the first things I noticed was part of the privacy fence I’ve been begging Jimmie to take down for years had been demolished, so that was actually a good thing.
And despite its overly festive autumn-like appearance, the truck, we quickly determined, was only slightly damaged, sustaining a shallow, dinner plate-size dent on the hood and a few scratches. Jimmie was easily able to push some limbs aside and back the truck away from its leafy shelter.
Our immediate concern was clearing a substantial part of the tree off our next-door neighbor Mike’s driveway so he could get his car out of his garage and go to work. So with the guys wielding chainsaws, I grabbed a rake and set to work cleaning up the smaller branches and leaves.
Now I have to say, I don’t care for raking on a sunny, crisp afternoon, much less on a cold, damp morning. But I figured since it was our tree that had made the mess, I was obligated to help. So I gamely hauled tree parts to the street, soon growing breathless with all the early morning exertion and as damp as my surroundings.
Driveway cleared, I retreated indoors and left the rest to the Jimmie and Mike. Though plenty of tree debris remains, it’ll keep until the weekend.
In the meantime, I’m counting the fallen tree among our blessings this Thanksgiving season. After all, it did little damage to Jimmie’s truck, helped rid us some fencing that needed to go anyway and even saved us the trouble of doing away with the tree itself. Best of all, we won’t even have to file an insurance claim.
Things could have been so much worse, but fortunately they weren’t. And sometimes it’s worth remembering to be thankful for things we don’t have or that didn’t happen because there are blessings in those things, too.
Email June Mathews at jmathews120@charter.net.