y folks and I slept considerably more soundly last night after we dropped the top two-thirds of this rotten box-elder tree behind the house on Sunday.  We’ve been working on taking down three old box-elder trees in the backyard since last fall.  The portion we dropped yesterday posed the biggest threat of falling onto the house, but another tree we took down last fall was splitting right up through the middle as it leaned towards the ground.  We will take it down in two portions so as not to risk hitting any of the young trees my parents have planted in proximity to it.  It is sad to see these three trees disappear from the backyard and to lose their shade, but their time was clearly overdue and their presence had become quite dangerous.  Luckily, my parents are tree lovers and have been planting and nurturing 
many young trees in the yard for the past several years, each casting more shade each year.  I am excited to see what some of them do with their new-found boon of sunshine.   Also,  on the up-side, there is a large burl  /\  on the tree we dropped yesterday that I think I would like to carve out into a large wooden bowl!