The death of two trees.

No one reads this crap I write so I might as well mourn the loss of my two maple trees in the back yard.   While some may argue that the back yard is nice and sunny now for sun worshipping, the loss of my two maples has seriously affected me.   There was a red and silver maple in my back yard.   These two trees kept the back yard shady and cool through our nasty hot summers.  The squirrels loved the trees which brought great amusement to the cats who were constantly on a lookout for the attack squirrels.  The trees were tall; forty+ feet which made it seem like they had been there forever and not just since 1984.   It helped the home feel established unlike the miles and miles of subdivisions north of Tampa which are just plain flat.  Once a year I had to rake leaves which to me, was like a sign of being an adult.  I was raking MY LEAVES.   A few weeks ago, several large dead branches landed in the back yard. I`m not talking twigs.  I`m talking branches as thick as my leg.   I started looking and noticed that they had a lot of dead branches.   I mucked around and finally called a guy we got from Angie`s list to come thin them out.  That`s when we got the bad news.   The arborist pointed out the rotten trunk on the silver maple (my favorite tree of the two).   There was a large hole on the other side of the tree and the inside of the tree trunk was rotten.  It couldn`t be saved and was posing a serious hazard in the event of a hurricane.   The red maple, unbeknownst to me, was diseased.   The tree had these mushroom like things growing in it with these "mole" type "warts" all over it.   I think he said it was anthracnos (sp?).   It would take a lot of work to save the tree.   So I pulled the plug and had them both cut down.  I was saying out loud to Jules "Okay, we`ll wipe the slate clean and start over."   This time we could put the trees where we wanted them and not where Al had planted them.  After they were gone, we were stunned at how much bigger our yard looked.  I laughed and said "Okay, time for new trees."  Now we search the net for safer, more hardy sturdy trees.   But I miss my maples.