Departure of the Deciduous

I come bearing sad news.  Or, rather, you have arrived to read my sad news.

This weekend we had to say goodbye to one of my favorite things about the house we're renting: our big backyard tree

Our landlord had arranged to have someone trim it over the weekend and when he stopped by after the trimming he realized that 1. the trimmers had butchered the tree (chopped off the top and left the low hanging side branches that were supposed to be removed) and 2. the tree's trunk disease had gotten bad enough that its large branches would like fall and could do some real damage.

So he called us while we were both out on Saturday and let us know it had to go.

I didn't realize how few pictures we have of our backyard until I started looking for them!
Here is one taken the evening we invited our church's youth group over for a bonfire last September.

< The tree covered about 2/3 of our backyard (on the west side of the house) and provided total afternoon shade. We rarely turned on our air conditioner because our house was so well-protected from the sun. I've been looking online to see if I could figure out what kind of a tree it was and it might be some species of oak. Our landlord was apologetic, but there wasn't much we could do about it. I pouted and watched out the window while they cut it down, branch by branch

And then, it was over.

Our kitchen is three times as bright, but I think i would give up my sunlight to have that tree back.

I'm trying to look on the bright side (literally--there much more sunlight in our house, and a chance for grass to grow again) but this morning it looked no less sad and lonely.

I'm not sure anything's going to be done about the stump for a while--does anyone have suggestions about how I could make it a little less ugly? (a pot with a hanging plant?)