Be Careful What You Wish For...

For more years than I care to remember, much of our yard on our pool side has been "umbrella-ed" by HUGE oak branches invading from our next door neighbor's yard. He has always been a good neighbor and we tended to "let it go", but when we put in the additional stone patio on this side - and, branches were constantly falling on the new gazebo roof- we talked to him about cutting only the branches that hung over our yard. We took our "tree guy" over to talk to him and the expert advised that the tree would not only look better but "live" better if the branches were cut closer to the main trunk. My neighbor did not like that, so we put things off over another year but, when the clean-up from his tree was taking its toll on not only our patio but our pool as well-not to mention my old body-, we had only the minimum branches removed and life went on.

Imagine our surprise when we returned from Gainesville the other day and could hardly get up our circle for the huge trucks lining the street. Apparently our neighbor had decided it was time to get his trees taken care of and out of wires or over other peoples' yards and homes-not to mention his own! I love trees and the huge oaks in our neighborhood are beautiful but sometimes, enough is enough!.

And so, he had his trees "cleaned out". All of those pesky branches that were hanging over our yard, gazebo and pool are now gone. The branches are out of the wires. His trees look so much better-they are not gone but trimmed to show off their beauty! We were thrilled...until we went out to the patio the next morning and realized how much that old tree protected us from the burning Florida sun-haha! We will now have to wait until late afternoon to see any shade. But, our pool man will have tons less leaves to scoop out and I will have so much less work to do out there that it is a more than fair trade-off for me.

I know it is hard to believe, but this is the tree AFTER it was cleaned out!

But, I have found myself perusing my "garden" folder on Pinterest to see what ideas I may have for adding a pergola or covering of some sort over the new patio. Maybe, something like this:

...or this:

or, what about this? As long as I'm dreaming, I might as well dream big!

 We shall see. Be careful what you wish for-haha-and, stay tuned.