I got to tadying_tree1lking with one of my neighbors when he was walking by my house on Thursday morning. He observed that I had a dead tree in my back yard. I am in my back yard every day and knew he was mistaken.

He pointed over the roof of my house to the brown leaves of a dead tree. I knew the leaves of the trees in my yard were green, so we walked around the side of my house to check. We were both right.

The top 30 feet of the biggest tree in my back yard was dead, but the bottom half of the tree looked great. The tree looked great from my back door, but I couldn’t see the top of the tree from most of the back yard.

A twenty-foot long branch had fallen from the tree a few weeks ago. My German Shepherd enjoyed dragging it around. Another big branch fell a few days ago and he drug it into the center of the yard too. Now I know why so many branches have fallen without a windstorm.

We need our neighbors. They see things we don’t see.

I was sure my neighbor was mistaken about the health of my tree, but I had enough respect for him to look at things from his perspective. I’m glad I did.