Survivors

If there isn't something called 'arboreal architecture', there should be. These are two survivors of the stand of oak trees that stretches between our house and the now empty lots next door. The tree people are coming next week to trim these, cut up and take away the 'prayer flag tree' which has been slowly subsiding toward the ground to the point where I removed the prayer flags as they were on the ground, and 'top' the live oaks in the front yard. There is one tree behind these which has  had a split in it for several years. The last time we had the trees seen to they tied the branches together with rope to take some of the weight off the trunk. This time I think a very large branch on the downhill side will need to come off. Then we will wait and see what happens. It has a few new green leaves but doesn't look very healthy to me.

At some point before we moved here, several trees were removed from the front of the house but the roots were left in the ground. These roots caught fire and burned for days leaving blackened trenches in the lawn, yet another souvenir of the fire that came so close....

Trees are so important to the health and beauty of an area. They pull sequester carbon dioxide and protect the earth from climate change. They provide shade and nourish the soil they grow in. And they make anyplace more beautiful. Losing even one tree seems tragic, so we will do everything we can to protect these. Just to be on the safe side, we have planted five new trees since the fire. Three of them were bare root and looked like sticks in the ground, but they are getting foliage on them now.

It is over 80 degrees F here today and I had to wait in the car while John got his hearing aid repaired. (Ripping it off along with his mask took its toll). I was struck by the fact that all the cars in the parking lot were clustered under the trees. Fortunately it didn't take very long because there were no places left in the shade of the trees. 

The giant earthmover has toiled up the driveway (or what's left of it) next door. they worked to clear that lot for five days, quite a bit longer than most of the other houses around here, and left a lot of red and yellow tape and orange plastic fences, so we surmised that there must be problems. Every lot that is cleared has to have the soil tested. It takes ten weeks for the results to come back. If there is still toxic residue, it has to be scraped again. I presume that is what is happening. I feel for all the people who can't begin to rebuild until they pass the soil test.