I’ve decided to post a day early this week because of tomorrow’s July 4th holiday. I want to share what happened the day after last week’s blog.

The back story: my best friend, Robert, left Stockton for Florida on April 19, and I expected him to return late last Wednesday or afternoon on Thursday. He had called Monday evening to tell me he and his driver were near Oklahoma City. I calculated they would get to Robert’s brother’s house in Hayward to drop off his driver by dinner time Wednesday.

You may recall, I wrote about what a mess my yard was in the blog that posted May 9, grousing about the amount of debris my huge sycamore tree was dumping all over the yard. The tree has continued to drop leaves, dead branches, and fuzz during the last two months, but it seems to be slowing down now. In addition to the leaf mess, I was seeing that most of my fruit trees needed to be trimmed soon before their summer growth got going. Several times I had actually said as I walked through the yard alone, “Lord, what am I going to do with these trees? How can I get them cut back soon?”

Wednesday, I worked in the yard, moving some dirt that my yard man had piled up last week, and I cleaned up the patio. I did all the odd jobs on my To Do List for the week, extending my day as I waited for Robert. At 2:30 a.m. I gave up the vigil and went to bed.

Thursday morning when I got up, sure enough, his van was in the driveway. As I was about to sit down to breakfast, I noticed out the window that the van door and ramp were open. I was surprised he was up so early and went out to greet him. Turns out that when he got here he was too tired to get out of the van so he lowered the back of the driver’s seat and slept there. I helped him get a few things out of the van, and I knew he was going to go back to sleep in his own bed.

I made a note of his arrival in my journal, saying I needed to eat breakfast—it was already 10:30. “Fun Day!” I added.

Since my breakfast was delayed, I was still eating and reading the newspaper when the door bell chimed. I well groomed man started telling me about the mistletoe in a tree in my front yard. I agreed it needed to be removed, but proceeded to walk him through my yard discussing each of my trees. The name of his company on his business card was one I had seen before. I knew he understood trees from the way he detailed what each tree needed and why. He had a crew in the area that day, and gave a reasonable estimate.

While the trimmers worked on the sycamore, I baked lemon bars, which was what I had planned to do first. The second item on the day’s list was to start cleaning up the yard mess. I laughed. This was such perfect timing. The tree trimming mess that is always left after the crew takes the big stuff, will be there when I get to each section, and I won’t have to clean up twice.

When the trimmer got to the smaller trees, I quickly realized that I needed to tell him what I wanted done on each tree besides the obvious problems. They also cleaned up my back-side roof where debris and branches had accumulated all winter and spring.

I worked with them picking up smaller branches that their rakes had left behind. They were out of here by 5 p.m. Robert slept through to Friday morning. I don’t think he even knew they were here until I told him.

One of the things Robert has said to me several times is, “You need to let things come to you.” I guess from his perspective he sees me trying to make things happen faster.

So, long story short, I asked God what to do about my trees, He sent the answer, and His timing was perfect.    Enjoy a safe Forth of July tomorrow.