It was unclear the morning after exactly when she had fallen.
Her nearest neighbor looked out the window and saw her stretched out on the wild grass, twisted every which way.
Broken.
Shattered, actually.
“The giant has fallen,” the neighbor said in a text to her family.
The giant was a massive oak that for decades had, among others like her, towered above her Ursuline Road neighborhood.
Together, the oaks provide shade and a natural barrier between properties, and perhaps most crucially, they evoke a feeling of beauty and a sense of permanence.
But seeing her splayed out as she was after yet another rain storm Tuesday morning was also a reminder of the fragility of most things.
‘This was the biggest and most beautiful’
The woman who found her didn’t want her name used, this was about the tree after all, but said her family has lived near the giant for five decades.
“Of this row of trees, this was the biggest and most beautiful,” she said.
And she was a survivor.
For decades she stood when her closest neighbors were walnut and prune trees, in addition to sycamores and at least one giant maple.