Damn tree mushrooms...

[senoritafish]

Yet again the city of Huntington Beach is trimming our Moreton Bay fig tree out front. There's a guy in a cherry-picker snipping off branches about 20 ft away from where I sit waiting for my toast to pop up. They do this every year a couple of weeks before the 4th of July, so it looks "nice" before the big parade. But instead of doing a proper trim job, i.e. removing deadwood, crisscrossing branches, opening up the interior of the tree and letting in air and light, they just trim the outside branches so it's pruned into a mushroom. It looks stupid and cheap - which is exactly what it is - they can't be bothered to do it correctly, but they do as fast as possible. I suppose we should be grateful they even rake up the leaves. When the damn thing blows over onto our house in the next El Nino storm because it's a big windblock, are they going to pay for it? Somehow I doubt it. I ought to hire a tree surgeon to do a proper job, and bill the city.