Scubaddict

A couple of nights ago, our quiet evening of lounging on our motor home futon/couch in front of our 15 inch TV watching Monday night football was interrupted by high winds whipping through our tall fir trees. We tried to ignore the sounds of fir cones and small branches striking the metal roof on our house and shop but soon we were unnerved by loud cracking sounds, as if a whole tree was breaking in two.   We rushed out of the coach to see 10-12 ft long branches scattered around the driveway but luckily no tree trunks!   We also decided this was a good time to put the 10×10 ft pop up canopy away before it decided to take flight. 

That night I started thinking about what might happen if one of our big trees decided it was done fighting the wind.  Would we be lucky enough to have it drop on part of the property that we still need to work on or would it rip a hole in our brand new house?  If you are a simple homeowner in our city, it is VERY difficult to remove hazardous trees from your own private property.  There are permits to buy and arborists to talk to.  And if you’re lucky enough to receive approval to remove a tree there is also the requirement that you will have to replace that tree with a similar species in a quantity greater than what you just removed.  Here’s an example:

3 years ago we wanted to remove 1 large Cedar Tree (26 inches in diameter) that would be just 12 feet away from Ben’s new shop roof.   We filled out the permit forms, talked extensively with the city arborist and at the end of the day we decided to keep the tree.  The main reason for our decision?  The city wanted us to plant 27 NEW trees on our property of like species to replace the 1 we wanted to remove.  It was the MOST absurd thing we had ever heard!   If I were to count up all of the mature trees that are currently on our property, I think I might have a total of 21 – 23 trees.  The only way we could possibly fit 27 more trees on our property would be if we planted seedlings and cut them down within 5 years, begging the question “Why bother?”.  

And the craziest things about our city?  If you are a developer and want to put in a new Walmart or ticky tacky housing development, you can go ahead and flatten 10 or more acres of land with apparrently no replanting plan for the 100’s of mature trees that are removed. 

I guess we’ll just get to build Ben a bigger, better shop someday if that big cedar decides it’s time to stop fighting the wind….