The parable of the tree and the neighbor

So these are before and after pictures of my front yard. Yeah. We had this nice, flowering tree. It had some large, overhanging branches that whipped you in the face when you walked up the front sidewalk but other than that, very nice. So this weekend Ang and I borrowed some gardening tools from our neighbor Bill and went to work on those branches. I thought I did a good job but there were a few that needed to be sawed off. Just the ends at the front. I had only cut what I could reach and it looked trimmed, neat. Bill offered to cut off the ends with his saw. We agreed.

So this morning as I'm outside watering (the place looks greener already, and you can see at the bottom of the pictures how we cleaned out the beds) and Bill comes over and offers to trim the tree. I tell him sure, go out back to water then go inside. Before I did he'd asked if I wanted the stuff at the bottom cleaned out, I said sure, if you want to weed it more go ahead.

When I next saw the tree, it was naked! Yeah, completely bald. Bill does have a beautiful yard he works in every day, all day so I guess we'll just have to trust him that he knows what was best for the tree. He was very proud of his work. I'm still not sure what to think, the tree is gone! But I'm hoping it'll grow back better than ever. Right?

UPDATE: Just got an email from my grandma. She had just called my grandpa in to read the blog and see the naked tree. According to my grandpa, Bill did a great job and it's just what he would have done. He said you have to trim it back for new growth and it will be fine. She said he should know as he has made most of their trees look like this at one time or another and they turned out okay! But apparently she's just like me and used to worry he had killed them. Whew, I feel better now!