The Amazon in LA

It's inexplicable, but the city's cutting a swath through the residential area I call home. Sure, I could probably ask someone "what's up?" or write a letter, but right now I can only guess. I prefer having mysteries. It's the questions, you see, that are interesting. Once they get answers my response is often "oh."

What's been happening the past few days is this: one unmarked pickup with a yellow light, one cherry-picker with a guy up top with a chain saw, two backhoes, and a large dump truck show up. The guy in the cherry picker starts hacking away at tree limbs, the pickup empties of guys who gather them up, and the backhoes start trundling them to the dump truck. The cherry picker moves on, as does everyone except the dumptruck, who stays in a central location.

The guys on the ground are wearing orange, just like city workers or prisoners, but I haven't seen any logos or decals on anything. These aren't city trees, or trees on city property, and the work seems fairly haphazard. My neighbor's trees got the treatment Tue or Wed, and I thought they'd hired some tree surgeons. But over the past few days I've seen the trucks, the tracks of the backhoes on the streets, and evidence of trimmed trees up and down all the nearby blocks.

The trees hit are close to sidewalks, never ones near the homes nor in the center of lawns. I don't know, but wonder, if it's because of trash trucks hitting the trees or whatnot. I've never seen the city come and randomly prune anyone's private tree before, so maybe it's just "Gardener Rodriguez" getting a response to all those cards he keeps littering my porch with.

Oddest thing I've seen. Some trees get it, some don't. They're doing a good job, whoever they are, and as I write this I realize this entry is just calling out for a pic or two.

I wonder who will cry out for the trees of Westchester?

2 comments:

Voyaging said...

For some reason, you post reminded me of Arthur Dent at the beginning of The HGTG thinking "yellow" while the word bulldozer wandered through his mind. :-)

Speaking of outer space, I think there's something about property owners owning all the way up, and all the way down (subject, of course to any reserved rights or other easements, rights of way, etc. belonging to others). So, if something overhangs city property, or interferes with some right of way or whatever, they can legally chop off the overhang without giving anyone notice. So, too, if a neighbor's branches were "trespassing" over another neighbor's yard, generally speaking.

russ said...

I wondered about that "property" thing. Most of the offending limbs, I guess, hung out over the sidewalk. What's curious (in addition to my posting this the same day Brazil released a report that destruction of Amazonian jungle fell by 50% in the last year) is I've seen the city take care of "their" trees, but never those of private citizens.

I know they charge us if we, somehow, break a sidewalk or something, so it's amazing to me they'd fix this. Maybe I should ask one of the neighbors whose trees were pruned.

If my neighbor's tree hangs over my property line, I can hassle him about it (or just chop it off where it crosses, I think), but the gov't doesn't come in and fix it!