Marilynne's World

My ash tree stands securely rooted in the earth, but they want to top it.

For some time, Davey, a subcontractor to San Diego Gas & Electric Company has been working to chop my ash tree to the nub – or at least to make it so ugly that it will die of humiliation.

I’ve written about my trees before. When we purchased this property it had a wealth of trees on it – and a large number of those trees were healthy little eucalyptus trees that grew under the telephone and electric lines. After much grouching and complaining I agreed to let the tree trimmers take out those trees if they would replace them with three others. They took out 47 trees and gave me three trees to replace them: a magnolia, which died; a loquat, which looks healthy at about a foot tall; and an Indian paintbrush, which shows no sign of growing taller than my chin. It wasn’t much of a deal, was it?  They also left me with the tree trunks, some of them as much as three feet tall. It cost a thousand dollars to have those trunks ground down. Ouch!

I thought that once the eucalyptus trees were gone, they would leave me alone.  Not so, they want also to take down my ash tree.  If you look at the picture, you’ll see a dark spot about the middle.  That’s about where someone before my time topped that tree.  (I don’t believe in topping trees.)  It will never be a lot taller than it is now.  It looks nice because a jillion wimpy sprouts have come out to hide the indiscretions of the past.

The tree isn't even close to the power lines

Every few months the tree trimmers come around and tell me they must trim the tree.  They know they will have to justify that to me, and they dread having to talk to me.  Sometimes they just sneak in and do it without a word to anyone.  The last time they did that, they left a broken branch.  It looks like they whacked it with the cherry picker.  It should have been sawn off further down the trunk, but I must have been coming up the drive way.  I came home to find it that way.

You can see in the photo above that the tree hasn’t grown close to the power lines.  If that’s so, why were they here?  Now they want to top the tree so it won’t fall in a heavy wind and take down a power line.    Silly.  First of all, they always measure the 12-foot zone from the top line, which is the telephone line.  They never, ever, measure the 12 ft from the power lines.   Secondly, the trunk of the ash tree is huge and thick.  The top of it is light and fluffy.  We live in a valley where the winds are rarely strong.  Even in the strong winds we’ve had, the tree hasn’t budged.  I think it has its roots in the ground water far below.

I'm standing in the road looking at the lines above me and the tree

Top the tree?  No good reason, except for one.  I’ve named it the money tree.  Every time they come out to harass me about the tree, they get to charge the gas and electric company.  If they topped it – for reasons of this dangerous tree falling on the lines, they’d get money.  They are paid to harass me and my trees.

I get so angry when I think of this.  I love my remaining trees.  I see no reason for it to come down.

Marilynne