* * *
My neighbor is out taking care of his front yard. Something about the look on his face tells me he disapproves of the way I keep mine. Oh, wait, that's not fair. I'm just projecting how I disapprove of the way I keep mine. Well, I haven't "had time" yet to do anything. Got more immediate if not bigger fish to fry. I recently put a new electrical distribution into the back patio, for example, so we can have string lights and charge our phones and so on without resorting to a fire hazard of extension cords snaking off the patio light bulb socket. Meanwhile, I don't have a lawn anyway. There was one there once but it was never watered and devolved to broadleaf weeds and dirt. Some day I'll neaten it up with something decent that requires no water. That day is not yet here.
I dislike palm trees but have one as tall as the house. Google streetview photos from 2011 show it half that size. It's a weed. I was considering having it removed some year, but then I learned my primary housemate actually likes it. Palm trees make her think of California and the dreams she cherished during long Minnesota winters. Well, I'll keep it for that.
I had a tree removed a couple weeks ago that was growing too close to the house. The wall was starting to buckle. It will buckle no more, though I'm uncertain what will happen when the trunk rots away. The upper branches, ignored for many years, had started to wear ruts into the roofing material up above. It looks ugly but I think the roof is sound. I'll deal with that some other year also.
* * *
Do you capitalize after colons or not? I prefer to: I think it reads better. But none of the automation (grammar checks etc) in software remarks on it.
* * *
All that above was written hours and hours ago. I can't imagine describing the dynamics since just then. Loving gatherings, disrespect and betrayals, sun and substance ... me indulging in none of that but seeming the sane one anchoring ships caught in the maelstrom ... We have lots of dynamic friends and shit happens but at the end of the day ... it's just the end of another day. The cars run fine. The kids are fed. What else is there really?
3 comments:
The issue I have with palm trees is that they do stuff that usually requires someone to go clean up after them. In some parts of the Phoenix area, for example, when the palm fronds dry up and hang limp, shriveled, brown against the trunk people think "ew, that's disgusting" and so they enacted a regulation requiring the people in whose yards those trees are growing cut off the brown stuff. Or they send out long spires of flowers that burst open, raining an annoying white-ish substance upon all below, followed by clusters of little hard berries or nuts or other fruit. Again, these things are frowned upon and must be cleaned up.
If you don't own a pair of spikes, or otherwise don't feel inclined to climb up your tree to cut all that shit off of it, you have to pay someone else to do it.
The fines for not doing it are much higher than paying someone to do it.
I suspect the people who do those things for a living conspired with the city fathers to create those regulations and statutes.
I suspect the same. I am unaware of any such local regulation. Thus far the dead fronds have been trimmable with a saw and stepladder, and I've only done it so I wouldn't walk into the damn things.
I love palm trees.
You do not capitalize after colons.
We replaced our front lawn with drought resistant native species. It's flourishing and we don't water it. There's all kinds of critters living in it now, and we even had a mountain lion chase a raccoon through a while back in the middle of the night, according to a neighbor.
Bitchin'!
Post a Comment