The Demise of an Old Dead Friend

It is interesting how things affect me.  Thirty years ago, just after we built our new house I went up Swan Creek Canyon to get a quaking aspen to start landscaping the yard.  Aspen are hard to move but the tree finally survived and grew.  It never was really robust but it held its own in the back yard and got about thirty feet high.  Six years ago we added an addition to the house but the old aspen was in the way so I had it spaded and moved with some pine trees.  It lived for about a year and then gave up the ghost and died.  I hoped it would send up some new shoots but it never did.  I was just below my deck where I feed birds so I thought that I would leave it as a perching area.  I then planted a small aspen next to it, 

For the last five years countless birds have sat in it.  Everything from magpies, songbirds, turkeys, crows, doves and many others.  I have enjoyed watching the birds fly from the tree to the feeder as I sat in the living room drinking coffee.  Yesterday we had a micro burst come through and it blew the old tree down.  I miss it and the birds.  There is a vacant spot in my view.  It will take at least five years for the living aspen to get high enough for me to see it.  I will cut the old tree up and put it by the fire pit and the grandsons will have great sport picking up the sticks to throw on the fire as we roast marshmallows.  Everything has a beginning and an end.