What're a Few Trees?

I was in a photographic mood yesterday.  I decided that I was not using my camera enough lately and because I wanted to take a couple of photos for this post I ventured out in the drizzle to do so.  The light was not very good due to the greyness of the day, but I did what I could before it really started coming down. 

Our town is filled with trees of all varieties.  We have been home to a Federal agricultural research station for more than a hundred years and everywhere you look, there are ginkos, magnolias, white and pink dogwoods, copper beeches, every kind of maple, tulip trees, and a lot of other varieties I cannot name.  Across the street from us is one of the most stunningly beautiful copper beeches in the neighbourhood.  I cannot begin to express how much joy it is to watch that tree change with the seasons.  Last year the neighbour built a very tall garage for his boat.  An arborist was called in and began cutting off all the lower branches.  I immediately rushed outside and found the neighbour.  He assured me they were only trimming the lower half to make room for the garage (which I secretly call 'the fire hall'). 

Not so long ago a simple, white 1950's house sat elegantly in the middle of one of the prettiest yards in the town.  What made the yard so pretty were several mature trees, including a locally famous huge pink magnolia, and a well-kept lawn.  The residents of the house were quite elderly and employed a local landscaping business to mow, trim, and maintain their shrubs and lawn.  Just recently the house went up for sale, was sold in a week, and within days I saw a crew beginning what looked like a thinning of the trees on both sides of the house.  I wondered if the new owners had decided the yard needed more light, and I could understand that.  A few days later I walked by again and saw a certain local figure standing on the property overseeing the proceedings.  Several trees were now completely cut down and it appeared the lots on either side of the house, which was now rented out, were about to be nearly emptied of trees.  The shrubs and the beautiful magnolia which fill the lot of the rented house were left basically intact, though the magnolia had been given a major pruning.

The 'certain local figure' is a property developer who plans to build three new houses on the bare lots. Our town has a land use plan which preserves much of the agricultural land and encourages high-density new- builds, which is good, but there is absolutely no law protecting trees.  I remembered a Japanese student from my days as an ESL assistant, asking me why Canadians were so concerned about protecting forests when there were trees everywhere he looked.  As I stood in the rain looking at the stumps and rounds of wood across the street I wondered if I was being too sensitive. True, the city had just planted a neat and tidy row of baby trees all along the boulevard, the entire length of the street - although I couldn't help cynically imagining it was some sort of ploy to soften public opinion as a rather angry letter-to-the-editor had already appeared in the paper. 

I think I, and many other local citizens are upset for a few different reasons:  there was absolutely no public consultation before the cutting started and I have yet to see any statement of plans by the developer; we have lost about half an acre of beautiful, mature trees that were enjoyed by everyone in the neighbourhood, not just the owners of the white house; It seems that in this town, if it isn't in the museum, it's not worth a thought.  It's out with the old and in with the new.  I know the new houses will contain families and they will most likely plant shrubs, but their yards will be very small.  We are quickly losing many of the older houses and their trees as high density development charges ahead.  The road into town, which used to be lined with large properties and older homes of character, is fast being filled with cookie cutter townhouses.  I suppose this kind of progress is inevitable as more and more people move out to the Valley from the cities of Vancouver and Surrey, and they need homes, too, but it is still hard to witness the transformation. When I moved here, I never thought of this town as suburbia, the definition of which, according to Alfred E. Neuman is 'a place where they cut down all the trees and then name the streets after them,' but it certainly is starting to look like it in places.  I'm truly grateful that we can still take walks and runs and bike rides on the farm roads, where the fields and trees provide a much needed sense of space and beauty.

The other day I noticed yet another change on the street in question.  The house directly across the street from the white house is now for sale - further proof I'm not the only one a bit disheartened by this recent turn of events.

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On a lighter note, Halloween is approaching and we gathering pumpkins, assembling costumes and making decorations.  My eldest daughter made a great skeleton out of plastic milk jugs on Sunday afternoon. She found the instructions on the web.  Note his friend the hatted spider to his left.



And while she made 'Bones Malone' and I prepared for a meeting, her dad watched the football game on his one day off of the week.  Yup, it's fall!