Our first home had huge trees that provided us wonderful shade and many leaves to rake.

….and leaves to play in…..

…and our swing hung from the front yard tree, where I would swing our babies many hours to help them fall asleep

While living in our first home, we needed to have the huge trees trimmed before winter because they were overhanging our roof and Missouri gets ice and we didn’t want large branches to crash onto our roof.  When the tree trimmers came they used ladders, lifts, had a chipper they placed the branches in that chopped them into mulch and trimmed the branches with gas powered trimmers while wearing safety glasses, boots, ear protection and safety harnesses.

Then we moved to what was our “dream” home and one of the first things we did was plant trees.

We had two papaya trees at our current residence, however, one fell onto the house and one needed to be cut down.  I have planted a moringa tree that is growing quite well.

Our neighbors have an avocado tree that overhangs our backyard.  Unfortunately, the fruit from that particular avocado tree isn’t very good and our neighbor decided to start cutting it down.  He was balancing on the tree barefoot using a machete to cut the large branches.  I wanted to snap a photo since my mind was wandering to the first time I watched tree trimming and the stark difference in the experience we had with tree trimmers at our first home and the tree trimming experience I watched just the other day.