In the ongoing saga of the construction project across the street, today 8 mature (more than 100 year old) trees were murdered. 4 gigantic Douglas firs and 4 assorted leafy maples. I guess they thought shade for their new playground was a bad idea?
If we wanted to cut down ONE tree in our yard (and we do, Eric hates it and it's a trashy thing) we would have to do all kinds of demeaning things. Including getting permission from the city, even though they don't own the goddamn thing. They try to keep existing trees, says it in writing on their website.
Unless of course those trees would provide shade to a school playground. In that case, they all just need to die. And now.
Now lest you think I'm a tree-hugging, granola-munching hippie, I'm not. I have no issue with trees being cut down for firewood, for building of homes, for manufacturing paper.
I just don't understand why the trees that were on the very front edge of the huge lot that's going to become the new playground had to die. They were beautiful, they provided shade and habitat for various birds and squirrels, and were well-established.
::sigh::
I'm guessing they chose to do this doing Spring Break to avoid the kids getting upset and protesting the removal of the trees.
Things look really weird out there now.
Just a guess. Someone decided they were a legal liability. Fall over and hit a child. B.S. of course.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea. And of course they can give any explanation they want, the trees are dead and gone. Nothing anyone can do.
Deleteoh...
ReplyDeleteIt's sad. Or at least it made *me* sad.
DeleteWhat Fool wrote was my thought, exactly. And I bet there is a minor uproar behind the scenes - someone slipped this through on break on purpose, to avoid parents perhaps noticing and protesting. We had local electric company do the same - no notice, just one day workers were out chopping down 100-year old trees along one side of several blocks of street (until the city made them stop thanks to voters protesting). Seems Com Ed was tired of having to trim branches and respond to power outages if a branch fell in a storm. Shame.
ReplyDeleteI just don't understand it. The trees were on the very front edge of the lot in front of the school. It's two full city blocks, surely they could have accessed the site from a different direction?
DeleteHmmm....
ReplyDeleteYeah. Hmmm. Would love to hear the official explanation.
DeleteActually, I don't want to hear it. And I'm afraid that when I drive to *my* school this week, they will have done the same thing there, although there was talk awhile back about 'trying' to preserve the beautiful mature trees and plants that are there. I am guessing they killed all those, too.
It kind of defeats the object of having a play area. If there aren't trees or grass nearby. It's a real shame and pretty dumb if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't unheard of in the past for a building or trees to be knocked down over a bank holiday weekend over here in the UK when anybody who could have called a halt to it wouldn't be at work. Now if you want to remove trees you'll get a visit first from a council official. That's not to say it's works perfectly here.
Well, there are still *some* trees left over there. I drove by this week and looked. So perhaps they needed to remove the ones they took out for some other reason other than 'just because'.
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