When Jan and I moved into these adjacent houses almost 30 years ago, three pecan trees gave us handfuls of edible pecans.  Over the years, the nuts have been almost non-existent and the ones we've gotten have been shriveled and inedible.  

In front of our houses these trees have given us shade and shelter, part of the umbrella of trees that line Ogden Lane, but the drought has killed the two on Jan's property and they are coming down today.  I can hear the machines now bringing them down. I can hear the thwacks of limbs falling one after the other on my driveway.  

The three-digit heat factor every day is unrelenting but only going to get worse.  Our houses will be hotter, our plants thirstier.  Every loss of a tree is heartbreaking especially these giants who have been so good to us.  

 

As a child, I memorized a poem by Joyce Kilmer: "I think I shall never see/a poem as lovely as a tree." 

I didn't get it then; now I do.