On Friday night, when my family returned home after enjoying dinner at the Good Girl Cafe, I noticed that the light at the end of our street seemed off. At first I thought the street light was out, then I realized the eucalyptus in our neighbor's parkway had fallen across the street. The heavy tree was supported by two power cables. As I parked the car on the street, the DWP truck had already shown up.
In about an hour, the big guns were on the scene with a giant crane. These guys worked tirelessly throughout the night finishing at 3:30AM after arriving to the site at 8:30 in the evening.
When I woke in the morning, I found the eucalyptus in pieces.
Our ill-fated mailbox suffered some damages...
...as did our sweet Catalina Cherry tree. Eric trimmed up the tree. She'll definitely make it through, but she is altered from her run in with the eucalyptus. Then in the afternoon, two of the same DWP who had worked till 3:30AM showed up to fix our mailbox.
Our mailbox has been hit by so many travelers pulling a too-tight u-turn, the SPCA van, our neighbor's moving truck, countless times by the developer who built the two big houses next to our Ramshackle Compound. No one has ever returned to fix it.
This is the best our mailbox has ever had it. My hat's off to the DWP for tending to the tree & coming back to resuscitate the mailbox.
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Yay! Now, what fabulously creative thing will you be doing with the leftover eucalyptus lumber?
ReplyDelete(Yay for the mailbox repair, that is!)
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry about your cherry tree and hope it will be okay.
ReplyDeleteCan you get your hands on that downed eucalyptus? it makes fantastic firewood- one of the highest in BTU output because it's so hard. Split it while it's green, though.
Even if you don't have a fireplace or stove (some people don't) you could give it away to worthy friends or sell it.
Way to go, DWP. That is one tough box!
ReplyDeleteThe DWP fix-it crews are fantastic. We had a huge avocado tree come down in the first heavy rains of the year, and they had us back up and running within a few hours working in the pouring rain!
ReplyDeletePaula, Eric pulled a few stumps for firewood, but the other logs are beyond our tree cutting capacity because they are so large, so I don't know if we'll pull much more from it. I may rethink that.
ReplyDeleteJessica, I frequently review two local freecycle groups. Not to pick up stuff, but to give away what we already have. As very random luck would have it, on Monday, an artist posted a desire for tree branches for an art project. I notified her & hopes she comes to pick them up before the chipping crew arrives.
And hats off to DWP. They were surprised we were so happy to see them return to fix the mail box. The lead said normally people just come out to yell at them. My take is that that poor eucalyptus would still be precariously leaning on the poll if they hadn't arrived...or worse...it could have toppled down and totally killed the Catalina Cherry.
Eucalyptus are beautiful trees but are trouble around buildings - we have near our home beautiful old river gums that are also know as widow makers. Makes one think before sitting in their shade.
ReplyDelete