Smooshed

Tree vs. Truck, Santa Cruz, CA, February 20, 2017

Just a few houses away from here a 40-or-50-foot eucalyptus, bent by the ferociously windy day, gave, and, leaning, crushed a parked truck's cab, arching over the entire roadway, from front yard where it failed to front fence across the street, blocking the way with a 15 foot wall of foliage.

Eucalyptus Blocks Street, Santa Cruz, CA, February 20, 2017

It's laid there for a couple of days, long enough so that I'm going to have to find out what I need to do to help get it out of the way soon. I've just finished parting out our own leaner, a juniper inclined towards taking out the neighbor's roof, which the tree service left in chunks for me to deal with after they took it down a few weeks back.

I saw the juniper's great bulk listing farther to the west than it had ever done before one day, resting on a spindly gate post that it had never neared in the past. I considered the consequences of not doing anything about it, and eventually realized, late enough that evening that I couldn't actually make an immediate move but must wait until tomorrow to act, that it was essential to cast about for somebody to come by and cut down the poor tree before it found its own ruinous way to the ground. Most of my night's thoughts, substituting for restful sleep, turned toward such eventualities.

In the event the tree service came promptly and executed the task with dispatch. The consequences I'd spent the night rehearsing were averted, or, I should say, displaced a few houses over from the look of things.