Oh man... I hate this kind of stuff!!!

Not far from my house there used to be a stand of HUGE magnolia trees. They had to be over a hundred years old, they were so tall. One morning we saw a sign announcing a new car dealership, and within a month those gorgeous old trees had all been bulldozed down. I wanted to have a funeral or something for them, I was so saddened by it.

Now, that car dealership has just recently closed its doors and left an empty building standing where those trees used to be, after LESS than ten years in business. They destroyed those trees that had been growing since our grandparents were children, if not longer, just for a few years of profit. Now we have pavement and a derelict building.

That kind of total disregard for trees just turns my stomach.

Yeah. Seeing what they did to those cedars made me cry. It was completely and utterly uneccesary.

And my bee bush getting cut down this morning made me cry too. On the fucking bus.

I can imagine, Speck. :(

(And when I said "trees," I meant ALL kinds of trees/plants/bushes... especially bee bushes!)

There was a 130-year old oak tree growing at the top of the hill my parents live halfway down. Last year, while my nephew was visiting, there was a terrible storm, and the huge tree, struck by lightning, fell onto a neighbor's Honda Civic, crushing it. Man, my nephew was excited to see a car completely flattened by natural forces. He talked about it for months.

Maybe every time a tree is cut down, nature takes a human life. Justice?

I don't want justice! I want my bumble bees!

Too bad about the innocent Civic, though.

Our condo association sends us threatening letters for putting our little potted plants on the stucco boundary wall of our patio. And the reason they give is that the walls could be damaged because they weren't constructed to bear any load! We've also been harassed for accidentally leaving our garage door open and for blocking our own front door with a terracotta ornamental vase even though the door opens inward. We think the neighbors just don't like us and have been complaining, but we've got a really prominent property near the entrance to the complex, and because the association's gardeners are apparently under orders to butcher anything that grows more than three inches tall, our container garden/patio/entranceway makes the whole place look better.

To me, these associations are just companies exploiting people's fears that their property value will change for the worse if anyone deviates from The Holy Sacred Official Guidelines, even when those guidelines are idiotic and actually detract from the appeal of the place. I guess that when people like my family, who actually do a really nice job decorating and gardening, show up, everyone else suffers since their properties don't look as good in comparison and complaints happen.

Hopefully, we're moving back east next summer and we'll be free of this nonsense.

/rant :)

Too bad about the innocent Civic, though.

Oh, that Civic is legend, now. My nephew will remember that day for a long time yet.

The boy's recently been discussing Impala with my dad. At one turn in the epic, Impala found himself, along with Chipmunk and Turtle, in Hundred-Acre Woods, lost and wondering where to turn. Luckily, Owl was there, and was able to, after a quick consultation with Tigger and Pooh, send the trio on its way.

All this began to trouble my nephew. "The thing about Owl, in all the stories I've read about him," he told my dad, "is that he thinks he's a lot smarter than he is. So it doesn't make sense that Owl's the one to help Impala and Chipmunk and Turtle find their way out of Hundred-Acre Woods."

And so the epic is periodically revised for its next retelling; maybe Piglet will know the way out this time.

Sorry for the wee derail.

Specklet, I keep clicking my way in here to sympathize with you over the removal of greenery, but I cannot get past "they're cutting down my bee bush."

Which sounds to me like some not-too-genteel Southern euphemism.

They're plucking at my grape arbor!

They're trimming my squash patch!

Oooh, my sweet honeysuckle!

Sorry.

Hee hee! I know, after I posted it I realized it was a little risque...

Specklet, you have my sympathies for your beloved tree and bumblebees. I hope that nature exacts justice on your landlord, a la Hugh's Honda story.

The more I see "bee bush", the more it reads "pee bush."

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.

What's happening to your apartment is very sad. :(

Aw, man. I hate hearing about these things. We had neighbors at our first house that were constantly on us to take down a big old maple that spread over their (rented) property because it was a "dirty" tree.

I have a hard time liking people who don't like trees.

Isn't everything you post risque?

I remember the yard where I grew up. We had an enormous willow tree, had to be three feet in diameter, at least. You could easily climb it. Over time, it just sort of fell over, slowly, but didn't die, so it was even easier to climb and hide in it's flowing branches.
Flash forward to last year. I'd heard from friends who still lived in town that they'd torn down my childhood home (which was an historic home, but that's a whole other rant). Before my mom moved to Seattle last summer, we drove past the new house that was just finished. We walked around the property - none of the old trees were left. And in the far back yard, the huge willow tree was gone, the yard so overgrown and messy. Makes me sad, but happy for the memories.
Across the street from where we live now, they tore down acres of trees for a development that now seems to have stalled. What a waste of gorgeous forestry. Hate it, hate it, hate it!!!

Well, apart from my initial thought that Specklet is not the kind of girl who lets her bush get so out of hand that it needs someone to come and cut it down, I hate to see trees cut down - we had to cut down nine large native eucalypts to make way for our house and I was really sad to have to do it, but at least we will plant plenty in their place (much more than the two-for-one we have to plant as part of our building permit). We cut down a tree in the neighbour's place on the weekend that had a trunk about 800mm in diameter and, even though it was well and truly dead, I felt a little tug on my heart to hear it hit the ground. There is no other sound quite like that of a large tree hitting the ground.

I take small comfort in the fact that we have been able to find someone who can use the timber for something - a guy has had his portable sawmill set up for the past couple of weekends, cutting the trees into huge timbers that he will use to make himself a spectacular house - most trees that get cut down to make way for development end up either as landfill or being burned.