Live in a neighborhood long enough and you’ll see trends that come and go. A trend I always hate to see is the cutting down of trees around the neighborhood. I have no idea what triggers this trend, except when I start getting junk mail in my mailbox or business cards stuck in the front door of my house advertising tree services, which is nothing more than an excuse to convince the homeowner they have a diseased tree that needs to come down pronto.

I’ve seen four trees come down in as many months, and all of them on the route I take with my two dogs when we go out on our daily walks. This is the forth one I captured this morning.

My wife and I caught a tree service busily cutting it down yesterday when I was driving back from my wife’s doctor’s appointment. It always saddens me to see this happening because of how dire global warming has become; all these trees provided shade, and where they’ve all be cut down is now an open to the sun area. The rest of the streets we walk down have dappled shade because of the trees by the streets, but the holes where these trees have come down will allow the micro climates where they used to stand grow even hotter in the summers to come. This past summer was hot enough. I can only imagine what the future summers will be like, especially without the shade provided by mature oak trees.