Out of My Tree

Neon Memes • My bane, my nemesis, my grand antagonist in the arena of domestic serenity has fallen. OK OK OK―way too J.R.R. Tolkien? Try this, then: I had the bastard whacked―literally. But the silver maple on the front lawn of my bungalow had it coming. The thing had been shedding branches and limbs with irritating regularity for some time, and during the monster thunderstorm of July 2006, it lost an entire bough almost a foot thick at the break. What remained of the maple inspired little confidence in its continued survival in the long term, and even at that, it served no particular purpose, shielding my house from the sun's modest morning rays instead of its afternoon blaze. So a quote-unquote loan from my parents led to a visit from DeClue & Sons Tree Care (3500 Telegraph Road, 636.464.5181)―and away went the maple. As a result, when Hurricane Ike did its devil's dance through St. Louis two Sundays ago, I had no arboreal worries or woes. Moreover, it mightily relieves me to know I shan't face raking 20 or 30 bushels of fallen maple leaves later this season. Just don't rat me out to old Tom Bombadil, OK? ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor