Trees...

This is what it looks like now. Late last week it came down, well, actually "it" was two fir trees and a pine, lined up east to west, what you see in the photo above is the eastern most tree. But they're all gone.

Here's the "before" view from the patio, looking south, over the shade pavilion.

Here you can see all three trunks, they'd been limbed up a bit in the past, mostly by Andrew as the limbs were laying on our garage roof and down over the fence.

Here is a better view of the third trunk, again all of this is our view looking south.

Here's our view from the back garden looking west. I've added this image to share the fact there used to be a third tall Douglas Fir tree between the two you see here, it was cut down in around 2007 to make room for the shared garage of the two homes that were built behind us. While we fought, and mourned, the loss of that tree, losing it let in a lot of sunlight, we have a much better view of sunsets than we would have had otherwise.

A little backstory on the latest tree removal...our neighbors—not the same homeowners who planted the trees—had contracted with a tree guy to remove the pine and drastically limb up the two firs, as well as remove a few limbs on their huge maple, they wanted a little light! When we floated the idea of paying to have the two firs taken out they were agreeable, after all as I mentioned the limbs of both trees were over our property, not theirs. We really appreciated their willingness to go forward with the removal, these trees dropped so much litter and created such extreme shade on our side, I was thrilled to think of them gone.

Of course I was not thrilled at the idea of conifer needles, cones, and possibly branches falling into the garden while the work was being done. So I pulled the plants that could have been toppled and we hung tarps to catch the debris.

Fancy!

There's the tree guy (Clayton) up in one of the firs doing his thing. He was amazing! Very little debris and no large branches fell onto the tarps.

This was the way things looked when I went in for lunch—that day was was the beginning of a hot stretch so I'd spent the morning out watering, and yes, watching.

After lunch here's what I came out of the back door and saw. Yep, that's Clayton way up at the top of a 40ft+ tree.

And here's the shocking light that greeted me the next day.

I have never seen light like that around the shade pavilion.

I could not stop staring, it was amazing.

Sunlight!

Photos of this area always had an off quality to the light, and frequently were blurry. Not anymore!

Yes I am smart enough to realize that a sudden change like this could be really bad for the plants. I know the light they'll receive is within the range of what they can tolerate (they'll be so much happier now!), but it is still a shock, since they've been in such deep shade.

The Podophyllum plieanthum are gonna be the most upset. Just in the first afternoon they had a bit of leaf burn. However I'm confident that next year when they leaf out they'll build up immunity (ha!) and be able to handle the brief bit of direct afternoon sun.

All of Clifford's leaves are facing north, it will be interesting to watch them re-orient, will they do it this year, before they fall? I wondered this as I took this photo last weekend, not yet knowing there was an intense windstorm headed our way and many of Clifford's leaves would be pulled from the tree.

The jungle cactus and tillandsia perched on Clifford's branches are also getting a lot more light.

It's nothing short of incredible, well, to me.

As I wrapped my head around the new normal I was also a little concerned about the upcoming heatwave. Temperatures in the high nineties and triple digits were forecast. Thankfully I would be around to keep an eye on things.

But then the forecast started to change. There would be wind, a lot of wind. Wind gusts that were extreme for later in the season when trees are bare, not in early September when they were still fully loaded with leaves. How would Clifford handle the wind without the buffer of the three conifers he's grown up with, right next door?

The wind kicked up late Monday afternoon and our power went out Monday evening, it was out for a few hours. Our local power company is very good about placing automated calls to let you know when they expect power to be restored, and then checking back to see that it was. The "power back on call" is what inspired the title of this post. The recording went something like this: "Your power should have been restored at...(9:25 pm)...the suspected cause of the outage was ... (TREES)..." it's a "fill in the blank" sort of recording where the time and cause are in a different voice than the basic information. The way the word "TREES" was pronounced said it all. Poor linemen, they must be so tired of the problems caused by trees.

I spent a lot of Monday night looking out the bedroom window watching Clifford's branches whip around, wondering if any would be left the next day. Thankfully only a few branches actually broke, and those were skinny ones that had a heavy seed pod at the end (no photos I'm afraid, they went out with the yard waste bin on Tuesday). There are a lot of magnolia leaves strewn around the garden now though, along with maple and dogwood from next door and Albizia julibrissin leaves from my tree. It's a mess...

The branches of the poor Paulownia tomentosa are almost stripped bare now. With the single digit humidly (and continued wind) when I took this photo on Tuesday, the 8th, the leaves were limp.

Paulownia leaf down.

The fuzzy opuntia (Opuntia orbiculata perhaps) has responded to the wind and the low humidity, poor thing.

Naturally the big leaves on all of my Tetrapanax were tested—with sustained wind speeds in the 20-30 MPH range for over 24 hours with gusts to 50 MPH.

And there were tillandsia down all over the garden.

Here's the biggest accident... a vent planter full of bromeliads fell off the fence and took out a dish planter on its way down. I'd pulled all my ceramic hanging planters but thought the fence planters would be okay. Thank god this was the worst of it, well, besides the overall mess that will take me days to clean up.

Surprisingly the jungle cactus all stayed safely tucked in their perch.

Out in the front garden the neighbor's conifer dropped a ton of needles, and their dogwood added leaves to the mess.

Right now these leaves are so dry that even when touched very softly they crumble into a million pieces. You know I want to get out there are start cleaning up. But...


And the odd sepia tone to the light made the worsening burns on my podophyllum leaves even more dramatic.
As I hit "publish" on this post so many people I know are packed and ready to go when they are told to leave their homes. Others have had to leave already. Some have found homes for their animals, some have not. Some don't have a clue what they might be returning to. Some know there is nothing to return to. The forests are burning, the suburban trees are burning. My fingers are crossed that with the winds calming, the increased humidity, and the rain forecast for next week the tide will turn and preserve what is still standing.


 Weather Diary, Sept 10: Hi 81, Low 61/ Precip 0

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