In February 2004 the month and year of my 15^th Leap Year birthday I moved into this apartment and immediately fell in love with this huge beautiful tree behind my building. That first year I watched seed pods grow, fill up, come apart and disperse. Every day, around 4-5 PM a flock of wild green and red parrots stopped by for about a half hour. That first year I saw a pair of bluebirds and a pair of woodpeckers build their nests, hatch their babies and one day they were all gone.

It was a beautiful sight seeing that tree every morning with my cup of coffee and newspaper helping me start off another day. Whether it was raining, sunny, dark, sunset, sunrise that tree was almost a part of my apartment.

And then Hurricane Wilma came in October 2005 and shredded the tree. I watched it for 4 years to grow back to its former beauty and even fuller than before and for the past 7 years, this tree has watched me through a lot. Strange, as only Mother Nature would know, the parrots stopped coming to the tree and though I have seen other birds ‘visit’ I haven’t seen any build nests.

In the past year, I have spoken about all the trees that have been taken down on the Gateway property but I was in complete shock when I saw what the hired lawn maintenance company did last week as they ‘trimmed’ the tree. It was a complete hack job and worse than what Hurricane Wilma did.

I hope they let it grow back to its former beauty!