(Hey, I think it’s Tree Week on the GP!)
Our land has a nice buffer of big, old oaks, hickories, and maples between us and the two-lane highway. Power and phone lines thread through the middle of them. Thus, I have nightmares about orange Asplundh trucks.
So with much concern, I noted that utility crews and
subcontractors have been out in full force in our rural area,
inexplicably leaving one tree and then “pruning” another.
I pulled over and snapped this latest atrocity last night. The power lines are to the right (not in photo). As this is only a mere mile or two from our property, I may sit at home on the porch next week with the shotgun in my lap.
Gotta love rural Virginia. Did the utility company do this, or the homeowner. I still see many rural homes that practice tree topping in order to reduce the canopy size. At least the trunk isn’t painted white and the cuts aren’t painted black! And you can see the root flare on the back tree. At least they are getting some tree things right.
I’m also laughing at the house for other reasons. I love seeing the Christmas lights still on the porch and the ladder from the roof of the porch to the second story roof!
That appears to be a dead pine tree. Perhaps the homeowners want to leave most of it up as a snag for woodpeckers, but thought the top might be likely to fall on the house??
?!?
On my way home from work I pass by many “unspeakable acts of pruning” – mostly trees in an old part of town that have been ‘crape-murdered’, topped, or ‘trimmed’ to the point they resemble (in my daughter’s words) “gnarled old hands of witches”. But there’s one bizarre case of tree-trimming that really struck me recently – native oaks growing next to an overpass were “topped” a foot or so above the level of the guardrail. I can’t imagine they were a sight obstruction – there’s nothing to see in that direction. In fact, the only reason I noticed them was because of the fresh cuts. Could it have had something to do with the high-tension power lines way, way overhead ? I just don’t see how…