Hello everyone,
Thought I had dissappeared into thin air, didn't you?
Well I am back and I didn't think that I would be away for this long but that's me. Running in all directions and really getting nowhere in particular. A whole bunch of things are moving in the right direction though and more and more each day I can feel that, yes, I am going to be moving soon. Hope it is soon enough to catch the tail end of this really hot real estate market in the Lower Mainland of BC.
That is partly why I am writing today. No, not the monetary aspect of real estate but the 'grounding' aspect of home ownership. I was always told when I first arrived in this country to buy a home first and I always thought that this was like putting the horse before the cart. I thought you buy close to where you work. For most of my life that made more sense as work was a diurnal duty that had to be strictly observed if we were to survive. Literally. But that also meant that I would not be living in the woods where my heart belongs. Lets talk about the woods.
About three years ago I moved to an area called Delta with my wife. We picked a very select area called Sunshine Hills. The reason? Tall and beautiful trees everywhere you looked. Seemed gorgeous. We were like so happy we had found this place. The subdivision we moved to was roughly 27 years old at the time. Enough time for a pine sapling to get to a height of some 30-40 feet. The builder had made sure that the landscaping exuded the feeling of living 'in the hills'. We moved in around Christmas time in 2006. If you know Greater Vancouver even a tiny bit then you know that this is the dampest and the darkest time of the year. Except Christmas Day, of course. Our yard was a total mess with overgrown shrubs and bushes that dwarfed our one-level home and seemed quite chaotic. In the weeks that followed I started to work in the yard like I had never done before in my whole entire life. Just cleaning up. And cleaning up. There was this particular pine tree, just barely 15 feet away from our living room window, that had in the 27 years of its life grown to be a real monster. It stood like over 40 ffet high and its lower branches spread out from the top of our roof to about 3 feet over the street! Its pine needles were strewn on the grown like a foot high - and that's not even an exaggeration. I bagged them into about 15 garbage bags, the very large ones, and there was still more. What is worse is that the cedar roof on the house was completely covered by these very acidic pine needle. I purposely said acidic because you cannot even grow weeds under a pine tree for its acidity. Also its acidic needles have been known to eat away at cedar roofs. To add to my wows all the gutters around the entire house were filled with them needles. They call them needles for a very good reason. They are quite sharp and very challengingly painful to work with.
To top it all this particular pine tree was situated to the southeast side of our home and any chance of us getting a little sun through our skylights and windows was eliminated by it. The home felt always cold and damp. I had to do something about it. I started praying that those very long branches extending over our roof do not snap for obvious reasons. Then it occured to me that I had to make a sacrifice and have the tree cut down. I got on the internet and researched as much as I could about the North American pine tree. 8 out of 10 posts were from people that were having the same issues as I was. The final push came when I read an article on the net that pine trees are actually detrimental to the environment.
I consulted with a local landscaper. Unbeknown to me about 6 months earlier the local council had enacted a by-law protecting trees in the city. It was such a new matter that even the landscaper was unaware of it. The neighbours were a little irked. What a beautiful tree they said. How could I even think of hurting it. Of course these neighbours did not care about the reasons. If I had to prematurely re-roof my home it was not their problem of course. Plus I had to get a blower to blow the pine needles off the street and straight into my yard! The neighbours made sure I understood that!!
Let me just take us through the benefits of having a totally unmanaged 27 year old tree by your living room window. Lets talk for a second about the acidity in the soil around the tree. Easy fix, one may say. Just throw tons of lime on the ground that is affected by the acidity, roto-till thoroughly, and heavily water the ground for a couple weeks and presto, you have ideal soil for shady bushes for the next few months. Next year just repeat the process. Now let me make it very clear. I love to work in the garden but to haul a ton of lime every year to my driveway, then spread it evenly on the ground and then roto-till and water all smacks of environmental pollution to me. Besides the sheer monetary downside. It takes almost alternate days of blowing the yard and roof to keep it free from the mess from the tree. And they dont make hybrid blowers yet. All need energy and leave a mark on the environment. I am told that simply operating a household lawnmower for a couple hours is worse, from a pollution standpoint, than to run a six-cylinder auto for a whole day!
I took my case to the City. I presented my case to whoever cared to listen at the City Hall. I sent emails to a number of City staff on the advise of bylaw officers. I wanted to play by the rules. Gave them time. And more time. Six months later no response to all my desperate cries. Goverment bureaucracy at work. Thought I would cut them some slack. Made a couple more personal visits. It was like starting all over. There was no file created and I was left to go over my pleas like a broken record. When the Head guy in a department gives you the shove then you know its time to call your move. I did just that. Totally frustrated by the lack of response to my requests, I called a tree cutter and told him that I wanted to have the tree down immediately after the New Year Holiday. I was at work when the fellow started his work and had the tree down by the time I got back. What a difference to my airspace! I could actually see my house and the sun could now sends its most welcome rays onto my home and into it via a couple skylights. My wife moved her most comfortable chair to the living room window and took in the sun like a tonic. She was severely challenged by this time and the new sunny and warm spot she had found in her home was an immense blessing.
Where the pine tree stood, I now have a gorgeous garden with perennials and evergreen bushes. The view from the window is so soothing. The need for heat in the home has been cut down by the introduction of the Natural Heat from the sun. I do not have to get up on the roof each week to blow stuff down. I work outside in the garden as often as I can. It has made my life so much meaningful. Now that I am alone again. I can sometimes stand by my wife's favourite window and see her smiling down on me from the Heavens.
As a final note the City called me in. Slapped me with a fine for destroying the tree. Regardless of the inaction on the City's part for more than a full year. The Engineering Department has planted two maples along the same side of my house as replacement for the pine tree. I feel sorry for the occupants of this little rancher forty years from now when they will be challenged to catch the sun from their home due to these maple trees that will inevitably be about 30 - 40 feet high then. The maple leaves will have to be blown aside, packed in bags, get picked up by the City, get trucked to the City Compost site where heavy machinery will work tirelessly so that we can have good compost next year for another round of a gardening we will go.
If you ask me trees should be left in the forest. No question we should have some around but to plant trees, metres from houses today, with no accountability for future issues is senseless. Clearly a solar panel on a roof is not as pretty as an overbearing tree but the benefits of the first totally outweigh the benefits of the second.
