The stars aligned, the contractors returned for a marathon day yesterday and the house is (almost) done. As well, fabulous husband (hereafter known as "The Shoveler") and I were very busy indeed.

All around our front yeard, which has been charitably refered to as my Weed Sactuary, there was a chain link fence. Inside, there were three trees and a quantity of lilies, michaelmas daisies, stone crop, tulips, more and different stone crop, periwinkle, and peonies. The peonies found a home with a neighbour. The periwinkle was sadly unsalvaged, but day before yesterday everything else was uprooted and deposited in the backyard on a shelf to await re-planting, in a slighly more organized fashion.

Yesterday, the chain link (except that which joins us with the less popular neighbours) came down thanks to brute force, a sawzall (spelling? whatever) and sheer force of will. Gone too is the surprisingly thin bar of concrete from the front. Gone too are two of the trees. One was (I think) a peach pit that had been dropped in the yard ages ago and I had let it flourish. The other, the sick and twisted aple tree, went down swinging. It should be expected that it put up a fight - it was our wedding tree. Too old and too gnarled by pollution and random passers by yanking on it over the years to save, it came down in pieces - some of them hopefully stuck into either water or fertalized earth and I dearly hope they'll show some initiative and root. If they do, I'll have wee apple trees for everyone including grandma's farm, where I should have planted it to begin with.

The tree was originally planted on October 27th 1996 by the only guest at our wedding more intoxicated than I - yes, the guest who passed out in the cake. He also pocketed an apple from the feast table and took it home. One of the seeds from the supermarket bought apple took root and flourished. It shouldn't have lived, but it did and in the spring we were presented with two feed of merry leaves and hopeful wee trunk. Our hundred year old silver leaf maple had come down the year before and as the trunk had an opening in the centre, it seemed like a good place to plant the sapling. It wasn't - as the years went by and the old tree crumbled to earth, the new tree began to list and lean over the sidewalk. It was a full six years before it flowered and I was very excited by the sight of blossoms. Recalling the conversation:
Fabulous Husband: What are you on about? It bloomed last year.
Me: No it didn't.
FH: Yes it did, it bloomed all last summer.
Me: ...really?
FH: Yes (smug at noting something botanical), you just didn't notice.
Me: Boo, were these blossoms by any chance blue and purple?
FH: Yup.
Me: And in your experiance, apple blossoms are blue and don't result in apples?
FH: Now that you meantion it, it did seem a little weird but it's your garden...
Me: Sweetie, I think you'll find those were morning glories. Like on the fence, see?
FH: Shut up.
Years passed, apples finally came and I occasionally tried to make them grow. I'd lost touch with the wedding guest and so asked the advice of apple merchants and bee keepers (who in my estimation know everything), and followed the instructions carefully. No luck. It was sad to bring it down yesterday and I thought I might get weepy (as I did with the silver leaf maple years before - the city sent back a counsellor with the second team they dispatched after I rebuffed the first one, very embarassing) but instead I felt rather uplifted. Here the wood (through the GTA composting program) returns to the earth. Each fibre and root, each bud and stem that is not given chance to root is passed under to the soil and continues being a part of what I walk on, the air we breath. It felt very appropriate that Ross and I were the ones to take it down.

Not entirely just us though. You can't honestly turn on power tools without random men walking up and wanting to help, and there was a bit of a Tom Sawyer bit (that looks like fun...) with neighbour Doyle. And that was appropriate too - planted by one of the least personally sucessful men I'd ever met, a carreer alchoholic who's talents were legendary and also pissed away in his determination do drink himself to death over a percieved romantic slight - ignoring whatever friendship or kinship was offered on his long fall down. I think he's dead now. Removed with care and efficiancy with the assistance of one of today's friends, one of the most sucessful men we know, gifted and rational about what he is not gifted at, competent in business and willing to help out a food banks, and a also a hell of a gardener.

And so it goes. And the chain link removal? Had no idea how much that had bugged the neighbours, damn near had a freaking parade.