Sunday, April 19, 2009

The saga continues

The tree in front of the Main Street Diner survived. It is blooming and starting to bush a little. Well, maybe bush is the wrong term to use. It has one stem with about 30 leaves and another with maybe 20. But its alive. I was looking at it today and thinking it might need a trim. We are still continuing the "tree meetings". We have one scheduled for tomorrow. I emailed the committee to inform them that the starlings are back and city parks director came downtown to see for himself. He concluded after measuring the size of the bird droppings (and I am not making this up) that the starlings were not back as the bird poop was to large. Let me tell you what I am looking for in a clean sidewalk. I don't want piles of bird droppings no matter from which species it originates. At least I don't have to worry about the walk in front of the Main Street Diner . No self-respecting bird is going to roost in my tree. I have a feeling some of the committee members are not going to be thrilled about the state of my tree , but my customers are. Don't get me wrong, I love trees. Just not the ones growing out of the sidewalk and into the buildings of our fair city. Maybe if they were 12 to 15 feet instead of 40. I have had a lot of offers recently to trade a midnight logging job for breakfast. But I am sworn to good behavior by the city officials and my wife so I can't take them up on it.(Unless one of you is reading this blog and decide to do it on your own "wink wink") Anyway, some birds of some kind are back and we are meeting tomorrow to talk about the problem. And talk and talk and talk. But at least the coffee is good(I make it.) Maybe I can sweeten them up with some flavored popcorn . I'll let you know what transpires.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Oh those pesky trees

The criminal mischief charges have been dismissed. Now, I am on a committee to explore the tree situation. And we are exploring it to death. 2 months now and we finally sent out a survey to the downtown merchants to get their feelings about the trees planted in our city sidewalks. Some on the committee wanted to include all the residents of our fair city. Could you imagine looking through 3 or 4 thousand returned surveys and trying to come up with some coherent thought about the situation? I think the easiest thing to do is to follow the lead of one of the business owners. The trees in front of his business "mysteriously" died. And the city parks department removed the dead carcasses. My tree looks a little under the weather. I am worried that it might not make it through the winter.