The pruning of a great tree!

(Ugh!  I hate when my posts get highlighted and I can't edit it out...  :-||| )

Bullet points to keep me on task.

• Planted a teensy little pine tree when we first moved in.
• Grew to be HUGE.
• Took up quite a bit of space and was hard to mow under.
• Someone came up with the grand idea to prune back the branches.
• BIG time no no since branches don't grow back on pines.
• I said to take branches off the bottom of the tree to make it easier to mow around.
• That idea went in one ear and out the other.
• Tree branches were pruned back on one side secretly.
• I noticed immediately.
• I've babied that tree and have it's first ever produced pinecone.
• OF COURSE it wouldn't go w/o notice by me!!
• I was VERY upset.
• My tree looked pitiful.
• First time ever I said "you owe me buddy and the only thing that will make it better is a big screen TV".
• Said pruner lucked out because he won an EVEN bigger TV than I'd asked for two weeks later at a convention.

Looks sort of short and squatty... but no...

... it's taller than our house which is about 25 feet high.

Then there's our Macintosh apple tree.... and this is about killing me to cut it down... but the fruit it's produced the last few years has been pretty undesirable. The story (to come... it's typed somewhere, but I also think my mother in law might have it) behind how we got it is incredibly heartwarming... and why it's so hard to part with it.  I've been thinking of something creative we could do with the wood...