{"id":70758,"date":"2016-02-04T12:10:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T16:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=70758"},"modified":"2016-02-04T17:22:32","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T21:22:32","slug":"thursday-clippings-2416-love-letters-to-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=70758","title":{"rendered":"Thursday clippings 2\/4\/16 (love letters to trees)"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Not my street. Our parkways are a hodge-podge of palms and jacarandas, magnolias, overgrown oleanders and scheffleras.<\/small>
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\nThe City recently sent out crews to work on our street trees, and the snarl of power tools and episodic rise and fall of cherry picker machines in the sky like so many feeding brontosauri was a fact of life for a few weeks. No tree was overlooked, and they tackled palms 10-stories high, finishing right before the much-anticipated rainfall event last Sunday, which to me seemed like a non-event. One-quarter inch of rain? Seriously? The real story was the wind. No prediction for wind was given, no warning to secure top-heavy pots. Blackouts dotted the power grid across LA County, as winds up to 60 mph roared down the streets, veering tightly down narrow patios to upend pots and generally cause windy havoc. High winds are my least favorite weather event, but Marty always greets them with a cheery sailor’s welcome and becomes energized by their arrival, so there was nothing for me to do but make soup and wait them out. And pick up the breakage, pots and plants, on Monday. But our street trees were ready this time, by Jove, so the timing there was serendipitous. After a wind event like that, our street is usually littered with branches, but not this time. And there will be much less jacaranda litter on the agaves in the front garden this year. Huzzah!
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\nThis is the one I was really worried about Sunday night. Though this pot may have that battered look that comes from toppling in high wind, its weight outmatched the wind, so it was untouched. I actually bought it in that decrepit state from an everything-must-go sale at the old Hotel Figueroa, where it was esconced on a pillar near the pool. The Euphorbia canariensis was too nice to pass up. After the winds abated, I did move it to a more sheltered position against the east fence. Each move brings off more paint and stucco, and a couple more will cause total disintegration<\/p>\n

Speaking of the snarl (and bite) of power tools, we’ve gained new appreciation for their indifference to cutting wood for attic beams or the tip off an index finger. It’s all the same to power tools. Marty has been healing up the past couple weeks and was busy yesterday stablizing one of the Monterey cypresses that developed an alarming list after those ferocious winds on Sunday. And I now realize that I missed out on a successful career as an ambulance driver. The overwhelming mood around here the past week is thankfulness that it wasn’t much worse.<\/p>\n

And since those fierce winds on Sunday, watching the trees bend and sway and emerge victorious, we’ve also gained new-found appreciation for our trees.
\nI love the idea behind this piece in The Atlantic’s CityLab “When You Give A Tree An Email Address<\/a>.”
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If I sent my trees love letters, a valentine to my Fernleaf Acacia just coming into bloom would look something like this:<\/p>\n

“Dear young Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’:
\nI didn’t think your beauty could be improved upon, but now that you’re adding this subtle wash of yellow to those blue and purple tints, I see I was wrong. Superb!
\nP.S. Sorry about all that wind. I must say you’ve shown incredible resilience!<\/em>”<\/p>\n

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Jacaranda flowers and Agave geminiflora, May 2013<\/p>\n

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Not my street. Our parkways are a hodge-podge of palms and jacarandas, magnolias, overgrown oleanders and scheffleras. The City recently sent out crews to work on our street trees, and the snarl of power tools and episodic rise and fall … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[28,2281,550],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-ipg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70758"}],"version-history":[{"count":101,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71016,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70758\/revisions\/71016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}