Reclaimed

The summer of 2011 was particularly harsh. We had a few impactful let downs - one in particular was when Jeremy was declined a fantastic work opportunity that would allow him to go back to school for his masters degree. And to add insult to injury the weather was brutal with 60+ consecutive days of 100+º heat.

At the end of it all the very large tree in our front yard - the tree that lured me in to buy this house in the first place - was rotting from the inside out. We had a skilled arborist come out and take a look - he said it couldn't be saved. So I paid the man $1,000 to have it cut down (ouch). He told me for another $250 he could grind the stump down below the grass line - it would be as if the tree was never even there. Out of sentiment and frugality I declined - I didn't mind having a bit of stump there to memorialize a tree as old as our house.

Fast forward to almost a year later. I get a knock on the door and it's my neighbor Juro (pronounced your-oh) holding three large wooden bowls. He tells me that he salvaged the wood from our tree as it was being cut down and made these really beautiful bowls out of it. Juro is a doctor from Slovakia with a naturally gorgeous wife and two adorable little kids. When the local university he was doing his residency at didn't renew his contract he spent the better part of his year doing woodwork instead. I gave him exactly $250 for a bowl that reclaimed the rotted tree, our Boxelder, into something beautiful.

A week later as Juro packed up his house and family for a new job to practice medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana, Jeremy was accepted into a grad school program to complete his masters in electrical engineering.

Summer 2012 is turning out to be just as hot as 2012 - but a whole lot less brutal.