Sundered Boughs

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but I can never decide how best to get rid of a weed.  Should I spray it with some chemicals and patiently wait for it to expire in a few days, or carpe the diem and pop it out of its cozy wormy earth spit spot? Or maybe just slice through with the weed-eater, knowing they’ll grow back but guiltily satisfied with the newly and neatly buzzed surface of the grass? What I seldom settle to do, however, is rip them out of the ground with a sudden clenched reflex of terror, which is what I did when a branch fell from my tree as I was weeding the nearby florae. 

As is widely known, branches fall when they are cut, and as is widely expected, the public utility contracts arborists to cut branches so the boughs do not grow to interfere with their power lines. What is not expected is that a branch should be partially cut by said arborist and left to snap off suddenly, and fall of course, at the provocation of only the gentlest puff of breeze that would have hardly spread a dandelion seed. 

So naturally after the aforementioned demonstration of Newtonian physics I released from my grip the mustard flower that I had unintentionally squeezed into a verdant pulp and, wiping my hand clean on my shirt, I inspected the branch and the other sawing and scissoring done by the expert team. 

Well it turns out they spiked their way up the tree, which came as a surprise to me because it’s widely known, to trees as well as people, that such spiky ascents damage trees and expose them to disease. So little did I expect when I saw the feller chivvying up my maple that he was impaling it and chipping off bits of its protective bark. And to think not a drop of honey out of the thing.

To share this recollection with you is, however, to give short shrift to the tale of when they the week before drove a cherry-picker through part of my property, without notification, leaving a particularly sad-looking welt upon the lawn and upon which my mower bounces each time I go over it. I’ll completely pass over all tales of damage done to others related to me, as hearsay, though I daresay there are a few known to me, and to trees of course.

What is unknown to me, however, is whether this shoddy arbory is the result of incompetence or indifference. I of course consider that the contractor is perhaps ill-compensated by the public  utility for what is surely a large task needing to be done in a relatively short season. Maybe the contractor is simply not paid enough to send out enough crews to get the job done more professionally in the same span of time. Perhaps, though, the contract is a lucrative one, and perhaps the contractor perpetrates this ramshackle job with impunity knowing that few citizens will notice, fewer will complain, and none will pursue the matter to the uttermost end of squeezing restitution from the municipal lemon.

In either case it seems I ought to be prepared to pony up more money, either to the public utility to better compensate or compensate better arborists, or to arborists directly in the hope that they, responsible for their mistakes, will do both a good job and a good enough job that the city contractors will stay far afield from my trees. Those are reasonable alternatives, though they won’t protect from crews passing through to get to adjacent properties. For my part though the boughs now break, I’ll be not afraid of death and bane, till maple wood clocks me on the brain.