Thursday, January 30, 2014

Day 761: Good-bye to the sycamore

Jason is an artist with the crane controls.  He and his crew performed miraculous feats today as they extracted two giant trees from our yard without harming anything!  The tree removal was necessary to maximize the efficiency of the solar panels.  The sycamore would have cast dense shadows on the garage and a few on the house as well.

We loved spending the day outside watching and photographing the whole process. Roger had lined up Jason to do a few projects at his house, too, so they were here all day.

Jason was a student of mine back in the mid 1980s when I was teaching a ninth grade social studies class called 9S.  It would be called AIS today and of course, it was before all the horrible restrictions on what NYS teachers can teach.  For several years, our class hosted a Middle Eastern smorgasbord on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving as a culmination of our study of the Middle East.  The kids and parents loved it.  We researched recipes and ingredients, printed out recipes, made title placards and invited the staff and parents.

Jason made individual lamb pies all on his own.  He lived with his dad who was in the State Police.  When his dad arrived for the luncheon, he said he had never seen Jason work so hard on a school project.  Both were incredibly proud.

I lost track of him over the next few years because he left our school.  And then one day in the early nineties, he knocked at my door.  He said, "Mrs. Cobb, I'm getting married on Saturday and I want you to be there.  Will you come?"  Of course, I went.  The wedding was set on their property in Brocton.  The ceremony took place on a point of land overlooking a steep gorge and surrounded by trees.  It was so lovely and I was incredibly touched.

Ever since then, whenever we need tree removal, he comes and we catch up like old friends do.







Molly is such a smart cat!


Steve on the stump of the old soft maple

Flying into the trees


Connecting the supporting straps


Hoisting the maple trunk over the house



The sycamore


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