Rotten to the core

The other day I bought a three pound bag of apples. One of the apples was half rotten, so I cut off the gross part and the rest was fine. Perfectly fine.

Yesterday I tried to do the same with a tomato. Half of it had gone soft--nothing too extreme, just soft. I cut off the soft part, but that wasn't enough. I cut off more and more and more until I realized that the whole tomato was a lost cause. Even though only half the tomato looked bad the trouble was all through the insides.

A few posts ago I mentioned our half-dead lightning-struck tulip tree. Here's a picture, taken a year ago. That's it in the back yard (appearing to the immediate left of the house). The left branch of the Y shape was the dead part.


One of our neighbors was pretty sure that the tree had been struck by lightning three or four years ago. At that time a huge limb fell off and smashed the neighbor's dog house (the dog wasn't in there when it happened, thankfully). That was our main concern actually--that more of it would fall and smash things. It's hard to see, but the tree was hemmed in on all sides; garages, swing sets, garden sheds, fences. During the earthquake last year (and during every storm of any kind) we kept our fingers crossed that it wouldn't come crashing down.

It didn't fall over, but knowing that our luck wouldn't hold forever we called up a guy who takes trees down for a living. Here's a picture of his handywork from back in October.


See? Rotten to the core. I have to admit that I was happy to see how bad it was. It made me feel like the expense of taking down that tree had been worth it.