[Windflier]

We watched it being built. We planted the trees that have now reached maturity. I was born and lived my whole life in California.

Stop. You're making me tear up for our old house in Compton.

Mom sold the house in 1975, but I remember planting the little palms and Joshua trees in the front yard with her when I was seven or eight.

Those trees towered over the house by the time it sold. Years later, I drove by, and the owners had cut them all down. I almost cried.

[gnarledmaw]

I have the same story only it was maples and some kind of weeping things with a whole bunch of landscaping. Chopped it out, leveled it out, and put in the Walmart welfare shrubberies.