Saruman Tree Services.

[JW Frogen]

The saddest thing at my work is the destruction of trees. This is a very large building, over a city block and is surrounded by semi parkland. They are taking out trees left, right and center. Just this week a tree was too close to the power lines, did they prune it? Nope, took it out. Now they are going to wipe out a beautiful grove of trees because they are rooting the pavement slightly and a wall. It can be fixed but no it is easier just to take them out.

Even the parking lot had this wonderful grove of trees, but slowly and surely they are taking them down. When I asked they gave me a bullshit answer that they have to plant two new trees for every one they take out but since I have been here about 20 trees have been destroyed and only two have been planted.

Often the reason the trees are taken out makes no sense, for instance they took out some trees because they were putting in security cameras and wanted better views. Only problem is they took the trees out before they put the cameras in and so the destroyed trees offered no rational improvement on security sight lines.

In Melbourne I lived in a beautiful tree filled burb with wobbly sidewalks, even the roads were rooted, it gave the place character and grace. Not Perth, in Perth they chop every living thing down in the name of safety and sterile, concrete perfection.

You should see the new housing developments here, very expensive homes built in these desert waist lands because the developers chopped down every living tree to cram as many homes together as they could. Then they plant these sticks that will take decades to grow which will only be chopped down once they are beautiful because of rooting.

Too many Western Australians have this hack and barbaric view of what beauty is, for them it is concrete and sterile stone. I suppose this is what happens to a culture when it's economy is based on the dumb luck of digging rocks out of the ground.

 

[JW Frogen]

I just saw Avatar by the way, which makes me want to kill my employers and have wild sex with a six foot six blue woman.

 

[editec]

The saddest thing at my work is the destruction of trees. This is a very large building, over a city block and is surrounded by semi parkland. They are taking out trees left, right and center. Just this week a tree was too close to the power lines, did they prune it? Nope, took it out. Now they are going to wipe out a beautiful grove of trees because they are rooting the pavement slightly and a wall. It can be fixed but no it is easier just to take them out.

Even the parking lot had this wonderful grove of trees, but slowly and surely they are taking them down. When I asked they gave me a bullshit answer that they have to plant two new trees for every one they take out but since I have been here about 20 trees have been destroyed and only two have been planted.

Often the reason the trees are taken out makes no sense, for instance they took out some trees because they were putting in security cameras and wanted better views. Only problem is they took the trees out before they put the cameras in and so the destroyed trees offered no rational improvement on security sight lines.

In Melbourne I lived in a beautiful tree filled burb with wobbly sidewalks, even the roads were rooted, it gave the place character and grace. Not Perth, in Perth they chop every living thing down in the name of safety and sterile, concrete perfection.

You should see the new housing developments here, very expensive homes built in these desert waist lands because the developers chopped down every living tree to cram as many homes together as they could. Then they plant these sticks that will take decades to grow which will only be chopped down once they are beautiful because of rooting.

Too many Western Australians have this hack and barbaric view of what beauty is, for them it is concrete and sterile stone. I suppose this is what happens to a culture when it's economy is based on the dumb luck of digging rocks out of the ground.

When I was a kid, in the 50s, I lived in a neighbhood in Easton PA, called College Hill.

Beautiful place, lots of mansions and affluent people.

The streets during the summer were tunnels, because of the overaching trees that lined every street.

Those trees were mostly planted in the late 19th and early 20th century when that area was first filling up with homes and mansions,

They lived their full measure and are dying or dead. They were not, and are not being replaced as they die off.

Now, the streets are open to the sun and the place is no longer that haven against the humid and extremely hot summer days that Eastern PA experiences

No longer do the kids hear the wind in the trees. No longer do they gather up falling leaves in autumn to play in.

The overall heat of that neighborhood during the summer is unbearable.

Every house now must artifically cool itself off, too, since that huge canopy kept the overall temperature on the ground much cooler in the summer than it does now.

It's a damned shame, and it's criminally shortsighted that my generation doesn't think in terms of doing something long term like planting trees for the next generations.

But we're a selfish lot who thinks that GREED IS GOOD, so what can I expect?

This is exactly the sort of WPA work and infrastructure investment that Obama should be doing.

 

[JW Frogen]

Indeed, a graceful city will plant and bare the cost to maintain trees, rooting and all. This is one criteria of the civilised, one will make an effort, economic and otherwise, to maintain beauty.

 

[eagleseven]

Saruman's back? Impossible...Wormtongue killed him.

 

[JW Frogen]

And yet the trees fall?????

 

[eagleseven]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w239_h1yRnk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w239_h1yRnk[/ame]

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Portland is very aggressive about maintaining trees.

And just one good size maple makes a huge difference in the comfort level.

Maples are great, Oaks are messy and attract squirrels.

I hate ash trees, the berries are dizzguzztiiiiiing.

Hawthornes are great. They have beautiful flowers and they attract bees. During the flower time, a hawthorne tree sounds like a great organ. The seeds are a bit of a pain, but they are small and sweep up easily.

Ginko is really popular because it doesn't wreck the sidewalk. Roots go down rather than sideways.
One of the evil things the city started doing that I appreciate (don't have to pay for it, and it is totally a usurpation of property rights) is requires that parking lots have trees. i think the parking lot owners may even decide they like it one day, as they really do help with the temperature of the parking lot. On a sunny day, a no tree parking lot is like marching with the foreign legion. With trees, it is almost pleasant.