Apparently, trees benefit from occasional trimming.
Who knew?
I fear that I have written about this recently, so please forgive me if you are hearing this confession again. But it truly has been a remarkable realization. Fruit trees especially. They do much better when they are tended.
My friend the tree whisperer came with his crew and trimmed my trees this week. It took them hours. We have lived in our little house for eight years now; we never realized that it would be kind to pay attention to the plum trees that we inherited, or the quince bushes, or the apple tree that is growing right in front of our house.
A small section of the tree trimmings. The line of branches stretches all the way up the street.
Unfortunately, I think it might be too late to save that apple tree. It was never trimmed when it was little, and now it towers over everything, but is dying at the top. It produces tiny green apples that plonk off the roof and rot on the ground. It probably was planted in the wrong spot, but I wonder if it would have done better if we had realized there were things we could have done to care for it.
I saw a fire inspector parked up the street the other day. I have a feeling that I will get a notice in the mail soon ordering me to have that tree removed, since it is close to the house and hanging over the roof. Possibly other ones, too. Makes me more than a little sad. But that’s the reality of life in the forest in California. The powers that be want to minimize the chance of our town disintegrating into ash. Although with the way wildfires are behaving these days, I wonder if all of our trimming and fire preparation will even matter, if a firenado is heading toward us. The towns of Paradise and Greenville burned in recent years; Greenville was destroyed in about thirty minutes, destroying more than a century of history. It doesn’t seem like individual homeowners could have done anything in advance that would have saved their homes or town in the path of a firestorm like that.
I was talking with a friend the other day. Her home nearly burned a few years ago in one of the Napa area fires. Her daughter lost hers. I told her that I was thinking about buying a fireproof safe. She told me that it would be a waste of money, that those safes were designed in the era of predictable house fires that would burn for a few minutes before the fire department would rush in and help. Fires have changed. We’re not even sure if a safe deposit box in a bank would be safe anymore. Did the vaults of the banks in Greenville and Paradise survive?
