Someone think of the syringe trees!

That's the biggest example of the tree that I've ever seen. We have a few in my neighbourhood; one is well-established with lots of branches. It's a very cool tree, and indeed looks 'living fossil' like.

But, whoa. Someone's going too far. Ban sunshine--it burns! Ban rain--it could get our children wet! Ban the ground--it's hard when the little ones fall down!

Save the monkey puzzle tree!

Monkey puzzle is a gateway tree.

Plus, they might try to smoke the needles. Anarchy would surely follow.

So if the dinosaurs dined on it, the species is no more than 6000 years old.

Right?

hehehe.

In our house we just had the opposite thing going on - instead of "think of the children" it's "can the children be more like mini-adults". They've asked all parents of children to take their toys in, instead of letting them litter the yard. Understandable, I agree, and I take our toys in because hey you pay big moolah for little plastic trinkets that are super-important to the kids so you don't want them broke or lost, right? So all parents who actually clean up after their kids were at this meeting, but the two parents who don't weren't. And all the complaints were about the kids of the two parents who don't. I'm still seething as the concensus reached was that we now have to put all the stuff in the sandbox into a plastic bucket at night. Ok, fine - but really, I bring in the sandbox toys that are Perle's every night and have spent many an evening cleaning up after other kids in the sandbox and I AM SICK OF IT. If there's complaints about toys being in the sandbox, can't we just tell that one single kid who they actually belong to, to take his shit home? Pleeeease? *grumble grumble unfair grumble grumble*

ps - leave the dang tree alone. Hurting oneself is part of childhood. sorry for the thread hijack

A new family moved in a half-block away from me. They're messy and groovy and have bikes and trikes and strollers and toys everywhere. I love them! I'm usually "that woman with the foster kids" messing up the perfection of this chi-chi neighborhood. Yay! for company.

I reckon kids should be messy, but when the yard is 'everyones' I understand the need for rules, like "don't put your BBQ right underneath my open window, dumbass" and yaknow "don't allow your precious snowflakes to export all the sand from the sandbox to build a giant mountain over the rose-bushes". This house is very lax anyway, since they allow people to let their cats out even though that's technically against the rules. There's just limits to mess and havoc if we all want to get along. Like don't leave stray cigarette butts everhwhere and stuff like that.