Last summer we had an arborist check an older huge fir tree at the corner of our property.  It was scary tall, reaching well over 50 feet.  Over the years we had noticed that ants had taken up residence and woodpeckers had drilled holes up the base of the trunk.  With a massive base that would have taken out any number of nearby homes if the tree fell over, we decided to have the tree checked out by the tree doctor.  The arborist came, ran various tree tests (or whatever arborists do to check trees) and gave us the bad news:  The fir tree was dying and in danger of crashing to the earth.  He said that trimming the tree wouldn’t help.  We should have the whole thing removed.  Although somewhat saddened by the loss of this tree – after all my husband grew up with this tree – climbing, installing tv antenna’s – we were more frightened at the thought of it coming down and destroying homes and injuring ourselves or our neighbors.  Looking for an affordable tree removable service wasn’t easy.  I had several services give me estimates – some were as high as $12,000!  I finally found a small but licensed service willing to take on the project for about half that amount … and down came the tree.  Now off to the side of the house we had a walnut tree.  There was no question that it was dying, dead.  Well, OK, walnuts still flourished in the summer and I would crunch them as I walked through the yard and driveway as they fell in the fall.  It’s a much smaller tree.  I knew we would have to do something about this tree eventually, but I kept putting it off.  Until last weekend’s storm in the Napa Valley.  You may recall that the winds were quite strong.  Maybe 40-50 mph.  Our son was in the home during the worst of the storm, and thought he heard a crash in the middle of the night.  The next morning he stepped outside and saw that the storm had determined the fate of our walnut tree.  There it lay … uprooted, dead limbs reaching up over our fence, with the top landing just inside our property line.   No one was injured, no damages to anyone’s home … for that I’m grateful. As frustrating as it was to trip over all those walnuts I’ll miss this little tree, but maybe Mother Nature knows best, and in some ways I’m glad she made the decision for us.