If you’ve read “I Found a Tree”, you’ll recognize this picture. It’s the bottlebrush tree that has been in my yard since 1992. It’s the same tree, you remember, that was overtaken by volunteer bushes, which turned into trees under our very noses. For more info on this, see “A Bush Grows in Fresno”.

Not only could you barely see the bottlebrush, but if you look at the top of these photos you can see the dead branches from the pine tree as well.

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Here are a couple of “before” views of the pine tree, which I had originally thought might have to be taken out someday due to its dry branches. It turns out that you are supposed to maintain them by periodically trimming out the dry parts. (Who knew?)

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There were always dry pine needles on my flowers as well.

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Now, I will say that a few weeks ago I was “Big Girl” and trimmed these branches away from the side of my house.

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I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. But even I knew there was no way I could tackle those other bushes or the pine tree.

Enter Jose and Eduardo, the “tree guys”, with their awesome team of tree trimmers! These guys are the best. It turned out I actually knew them from years ago; they were our customers when we were doing pest control.

I was fascinated by the whole process, and they didn’t mind me taking pictures. After one of the guys climbed all the way up into the pine tree, there were times when I was afraid to look! (Element of risk, you know.)

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If you look carefully at the right hand photo, you can see how high he climbed. He actually got even higher – in that one I think he was climbing down. He should be in the first photo too, but you can’t see him because of the branches. Like I said, for part of it I couldn’t watch.

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Just for the record, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to look.

I love this photo because it reminds me of our many (pre-pandemic) Sunday school skits where the villains, Shady Blackheart and Slimy (“the Y is silent”) Jim, would disguise themselves as a bush. Or, in some cases, a cactus, as you can see in “Nopales and More”.

Just a few of the branches they cleared away.

The pine tree looks so much better now! I’m not sure the squirrels are too happy though, because they used to love playing in all those dry branches.

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The bottlebrush is enjoying a new lease on life as well. It immediately started producing flowers, for which the hummingbirds are grateful.

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So there you have it: my “new” back yard. Stay tuned for progress reports.