An Arborist in the Family

Max has indicated that there are more blogs to come reporting on our trip to Cincinnati. Most of those are going to be about her excursions on trains, buses and planes, trips to the zoo, parks and the bakery and seeing Amber in Chicago. I didn't do any of those things with her, so I will leave them to her. Below is what I have responsibility for reporting which Max has referred to as "The Bride in a Tree".

For those of you who attended the reception in Cincinnati, you got to see Sharon wearing flowers and a beautiful dress. What you didn't see was her in what she would like to be her real element (OK, not her car which is also an Element, but rather her passion). Sharon attended college in NYC with a desire to develop a career in the digital world. And in fact that digital world is her current source of income. Sharon is the person that makes all of those famous people in magazines look so good. No she doesn't do fashion or make-up, she fixes all of those digital photographs so those famous people don't appear to have blemishes, wrinkles, those few extra pounds, or a hair out of place. Through the magic of computers she makes people look "better" than they really are. Now I've been leading you on down a path that might have you assuming Sharon is into photography or computer technology, but that's not the case. If you read the title of this blog you know that her passion is in nature and specifically in trees. She started out by volunteering at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and then took classes to become a certified Arborist. The botanical gardens made a big mistake by not hiring her, but that's another story not necessary for this blog.

Matthew and Sharon drove to Cincinnati from NYC on Tuesday, June 10. On Wednesday, I went to the airport to pick up my Mom from her flight from Tulsa and when I got home I found Matthew and Sharon in the back yard. Well, kind of in the back yard. Sharon was about 10 feet above the yard in my Honey Locust tree.

Last summer before Max and I left for San Francisco, Cincinnati had one of the hottest and driest summers we have experienced. In August we had over 25 days with temperatures above 90 and 5 above 100, but no rain. In fact we didn't have rain until later in the fall. Those of you that have seen my yard know that I have lot of trees. I lost several from the drought and quite of few of the others suffered showing lots of dead limbs. Sharon brought her tools and was trimming out the dead wood from my poor trees. I wish I could have taken before and after pictures, but I just didn't think about it at the time. I have to tell you that after she finished they look great.



And I would be remiss to not give acknowledgement to Matthew. After all, he did stand on the ground and collected the branches as they fell. He even hauled them to the brush pile, mostly on the same day.
And finally, my apologies to Sharon for these pictures. If I were better at using Photoshop, I would have fixed the stray hairs that were out of place, improved the lighting and contrast in the photos, but I don't think I could have made her any more beautiful.