another hit: my accident-prone lacebark pine

This long-needled pine, grown for its beautiful, peeling bark that resembles camouflage fabric, just gets better with age—or is supposed to, as long as it lives that long. But now in addition to substantial disfigurement left by an insistent male yellow-bellied sapsucker a year or so ago, my beautiful bark has giant divots in it, too (you can see both in the top photo). Weren’t the woodpecker’s rows of small holes and the oozing, now-blackened sap that poured out from them, enough for the one poor tree (and gardener)?

Apparently not.

A storm with high winds took two large branches and one smaller one from the pine a week or so ago, snapping them right off and taking a meaty chunk of trunk along.

I’m starting to feel like this tree and I are not meant to be. Ever have a plant that just seemed like it wanted out? All I could tell myself in the way of consolation was this: holiday garland. And that’s what the severed limbs have temporarily become. Waste not, want not, right? Onward.