trees are neighbours too!

I posted the other dayabout a new home being moved onto our island and some unhappiness about the damage the move did enroute — I wasn’t home when one of the neighbours circulated a petition (against the city allowing the move as planned) and I’m not sure on such short notice what this could have achieved. I’m not at all sure I would have signed the petition because, after all, the new owners will be community members soon, and, having already got the necessary permits, bought the house, paid for its barging, and arranged to have it settled onto the lot, they had no other options but to use the available roads, hacking off any limbs and branches that got in the way.

Still, I share my neighbours’ dismay at the results. The arbutus above, firs along the way, as evidenced by these scars up the trunk,
and these clippings along the verge.Here’s the stump of another tree that was in the way and, apparently, disposable. Saddest for me, though, is the damage to this heritage apple tree near the lot where Chinese-Canadians, not allowed space in town during racist times, worked a communal garden early in the 20th century. Our island’s new Community Garden association has been working to document the various heritage trees on the island and trying to get new ones started from cuttings and seeds. This tree produces tasty fruit each year, but since it’s on the city boulevard now, it hasn’t been properly pruned for years, and this butchery may prove too much for it to withstand.
Next to that damage, the gouging of the roads is a minor irritant with sights like these marking the house’s route much more indelibly than Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs!

These ruts, of course, will begin to disappear with the next rainfall, and the grass will grow back over them. Meanwhile, the new house will have a foundation built around it, water and sewer hooked up along with light and heat. Our new neighbours will move in and grow their way into their new community and environment. Right now, they might just be wishing they had chosen a spot where people minded their own business more, but some day perhaps they’ll appreciate a bulletin board with messages such as the one below!

To be clear, our new neighbours are merely doing what many of us might to expedite a dream — and dreams and homes are so closely linked, aren’t they! What my island community is objecting to is a collective social attitude that trees can be chopped — either right down or just a branch here and a limb there — for convenience’s sake, and they can be replaced. We’ve been fortunate enough to live in a place where the number of trees (in a diversity not always found in landscaping) provides a quality to our daily lives that we’re not willing to surrender without a squawk.