I was feeling especially spiritual last week when I was riding through Chester. Something in the distance looked like angels wings. No it was Bozo the Clown’s bald head with hair splayed on each side. I thought I was losing it until, getting close enough to figure it out, I realized it was a willow oak tree that looked as if it were a bust carved like Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.
I was so fixated on the carved tree that I almost ran into a sign that read “MEN WORKING.” The bucket truck and the limb grinder – it is that time of year. Dominion Power contractors were trimming trees and tall bushes that were growing too close to the power lines.
I love trees, it is one of the reasons I moved here 28 years ago. I moved Chester because of worked and I had to drive on West Hundred Road through Chester. Driving down through Chester, on the then two lane highway, the trees hung across the road on both sides creating a tunnel of green. Within months, the graders, dump trucks and chain saws invaded the village widening the road to five lanes of asphalt.
The tunnel of green was gone; replaced by a quick way to get from one end of Chester to the other, but at least you could use a new sidewalk and the traffic was not so bad then but ever increasing.
So the trees: the maintenance, though somewhat destructive and leaving weird looking trees or killing them all together, sadly, is needed. Do you want attractive trees along the road or electric power in your home during or after a storm?
In my neighborhood, whenever a breeze kicks up we cross our fingers and hope the power does not go kaput. We have to figure out how long we will be out of juice – should we drag out the old genny or wait it out, and we cannot afford a whole house generator. However, if we could afford to have one installed we could relieve our neighborhood of power outages, if you believe in the old-time jinx, if we bought a whole-house generator the power outages would stop – an option?
But, we do not have to consider such an expensive option. A project to put power lines underground in high-outage neighborhoods is underway. Dominion has already completed one and mine is on the schedule. No more trees carved in the shape of Donald Duck in my neighborhood.
