October 20, 2005
It’s 8:30 at night, 68 degrees outside, the children are (finally) asleep, Wendy is being taken out for her birthday by our friend Denise, and, I finally get a chance to sit down and write.
This morning, the light came streaming in where the eucalyptus once stood. All that remain of the giant are tiny woodchips and (ironically) a little replanted jade plant the tree guys had to relocate when they disassembled the fence to get the stump grinder in.
I’m not going to be romantic about this tree. You can write poems about them, you can drain them of sap to make syrup, use their fronds for houses, curse them when you hit your head on them, and you can cut them down when they become a nuisance. I’m not crazy about killing living things, but there are several factors about this tree you have to consider. One, in a good wind limbs drop on my roof. In fact, all the crap it drops on a regular basis are giving my saltillo tile roof a half life (I’m guessing $20K to replace). These things explode when they catch fire. Okay, maybe that’s a myth, but still… Two, it really doesn’t belong here in the first place. All the eucalyptus trees you see in California are related to ones brought over by one guy from Australia in the 30’s and 40’s as windbreaks, landscaping, etc. Yes, they are drought tolerant, but they don’t feed any wildlife that I know of and they stink to high hell. Which brings us to point three: they stink to high hell. Wendy wanted to get rid of it when we moved in and has always regretted not doing it before we did.
For the job of removal we ended up going with Paul instead of Javier, our normal gardener. Besides the money thing (which was about a $2K difference) I was unsure if Javier could pull the dang thing off without killing him and us in the process. What I haven’t done, unfortunately, is tell him someone else ripped out the tree. I have four days to do that before he comes over here and discovers it for himself.
Worse yet, I’m going to have to tell him we’re going to attempt to take care of the yard ourselves starting next month. “Just in time for Christmas”, Wendy commented when I told her.
I told her that wasn’t making the decision any less difficult. Javier has been working in this garden for at least 15 years. I’ve heard about his kids going to school and then college, and for a guy who came from Zacatecas, Mexico 30 some years ago, he’s done all right. It’s nice knowing, too, in some way we helped him by being his clients. It’s the opposite feeling you get when you go to visit the near Dead people at Costco or Wal-Mart to purchase some cheap shoes made for a nickel in China.
Okay, I’ve got a thing about box stores. And though I was probably halfway there anyway, working with my hands in the garden and seeing the fruits of my own labors (so to speak) has certainly pushed me the rest of the distance to hating gross consumerism.
The Javier decision is an economic one. We can either try to keep the filth in the house under control by bringing in a maid once or twice a month or we could have Javier. We can’t have both. We’re damn lucky to have even one. But my Saturdays are spent vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms while Wendy is at work, so you can probably venture a guess I’d much rather be out in the yard on those days.
What worries me, of course, is what if I make the discovery I can’t keep up with the damn thing.
He and his helper can fill one of those 90-gallon green trashcans every week with stuff from our yard. I have to figure out if I can do that without losing my mind and killing my family. Honestly, there’s a lot to love about this yard: we’re organic, we’re certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat (or front in our case), and whenever I’m out working I always here people say, “I love your yard”.
But then again, there’s a hell of a lot to hate: we’re inundated with Bermuda grass that Paul, the guy who lived here before, failed to kill before planting drought tolerant plants, it always looks like a mess to me, and I honestly get the feeling on some days I’m Sisyphus trying to roll that boulder up the hill before the damn thing comes down again and tries to run me over.
Maybe I should get my Master’s in Mythology of Gardening.
Hell, it’s California, someone’s probably already offering it.
Probably Berkeley.
