I’m an eco-terrorist at heart. I’ve always been drawn to living, wild things and while I’ve never acted on my impulses of chaining myself to a tree, I consider it in the scope of life possibilities.

So it was with a sad heart that I paid someone to cut down a 100 year-old tree in our backyard. Shading our whole house in the summer, the Hackberry tree was unfortunately starting to rot about fifty feet from the ground. With the other half of its estimated height of one hundred feet above the damaged section, it was time to take it down before it came down by itself.

We’ve saved some of it for garden stepping stones, stools, and even a large slice as a possible table, so hopefully it will continue to live on in other uses as well as our memory.

We’re trying to figure out what type of tree to replace it with, and right now we’re down to a willow oak or a gingko. Any suggestions? All I know is that I want the next tree to live longer than one hundred years.