Everybody hates my tree

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. We have a chinaberry tree in our front yard and it has been doing great for years, but this year we had a late freeze and I believe the tree was fooled back into a dormant phase. The only reason I believe this is because I've gone out and scraped the bark off of a small part of the tree and it is still very green.

Now for those of you that don't live in Central Florida, it seems that since the hurricanes the industry with the highest growth rate in this area is the work from home Tree Service. All you need is a chainsaw, a trailer and a dirty T-shirt and you have your own business.

We probably get two to three different "Tree Services" knocking on our door every day asking to cut down our (not quite dead) tree. It's amazing! If they would ask me if they could trim the bushes I'd pay them in a second, but the tree isn't dead and when it is doing good it is the main source of shade on our front yard.

So we thought it was just the Tree people that hated our tree until Sandra was talking to the neighbor about her smashed mailbox. Somehow the Tree entered the conversation and this woman began a 30 minute one sided argument about how the tree was a blight on the neighborhood and it was a weed and on and on and we needed to cut it down.

People are bizarre to say the least. It's just a tree, and it's my tree for that matter and I'll cut it down when I am ready. Does anyone think I should nail a sign to the tree saying, "I'm not dead!"?

Here's a photo of the tree:


Oh, did I also mention that she wan't to get rid of the Oak Tree in this photo as well?