Winter pruning happens in, well, winter, which began with the solstice on December 21. The little Memorial Tree in Felton Covered Bridge Park got pruned and groomed on the day after, which was December 22. It was already sufficiently dormant for the process. I did not want to delay it any longer than necessary.
Lower stems were removed both to improve minimal clearance for pedestrians, and to direct growth upward next year. Growth had gotten obtrusively low through summer; but pruning was delayed until dormancy. A few more of the unobtrusive lower stems that are substantial enough to compete with desirable upper growth may be pruned away later. Smaller lower stems will likely subordinate to more vigorous upper growth, even if not pruned away later. Only a few stems that crossed over primary limbs were removed, but probably did not need to be, since they likely would have eventually subordinated.
Binding of the main trunk was finally removed. The tree was bound from the beginning because it was so young, with irregular structure. As it matured, taller new binding stakes replaced the shorter old binding stakes, to straighten and direct the main trunk. Although the main trunk was sufficiently tall to not require binding last year, it remained bound for straightness.
Binding is typically performed while trees are developing in nurseries, so that trees do not need binding once installed into landscapes. Such procedures are performed by nurserymen, but neither arborists nor gardeners. I was therefore pleased to remove the binding from the landscape. However, and embarrassingly, because growth had been so vigorous through last year, two main limbs were temporarily bound to direct their growth away from each other! They would otherwise develop a detrimentally narrow and consequently structurally deficient branch union. Their binding should be removed next winter.
Although the binding stake was removed, a stabilizing stake was replaced, and should remain until next winter, and might remain, perhaps with minor adjustment, until the winter afterward if necessary. Because the stabilizing stake is coincidentally directly behind the tree trunk in the picture, it is not visible. A larger and older wooden stake that broke at the base, but remained attached between the tree trunk, binding stake and newer stabilizing stake through most of last year, after the newer stabilizing stake was installed, is now gone.
The little Memorial Tree in Felton Covered Bridge Park is doing quite well.
Rain is forecast to possibly begin after noon on Tuesday, and possibly continue for a few days. Although the forecast is not definite, with only a chance of rain for most of the next few days, rain is likely for Wednesday. It is no surprise. It happens at this time of year.
Within the context of my other blog of horticultural topics, I write about weather as an asset to horticulture. Plant life needs it. Some prefer warmer weather to cooler weather. Others need more of a chill through winter. Some can survive longer than others without rain. Others want more moisture. Various plants require various combinations of weather, but they all need some sort of weather.
People are very different. We do not need any particular weather. We can enjoy weather while it is pleasant, but can choose to not do so. Furthermore, if weather gets to be too unpleasantly cool, warm or wet, most of us can find shelter in which to be more comfortable than we might otherwise be outside in the weather.
A few of us lack the option of finding adequate shelter when the weather gets to be too uncomfortable, such as it will with the rain that is forecast for the next few days. As the terminology defines, the homeless lack homes.
Fortunately, the local climate is relatively mild. The weather does not get as cold as it does in other climates. Cold weather generally does not last for too long. Nor does rainy weather. Nonetheless, just a few hours of mildly cold or rainy weather can be unhealthy or even dangerous.
Fortunately, not many people lack homes or shelter locally. Nonetheless, one person without shelter during potentially unhealthy or dangerous weather is one too many.
Weather often contributes to the unpleasantries of homelessness.
Derived from a misspelling and bad grammar, it is a fictitious place of the Peanuts comics. According to Charlie Brown, ‘Chateau du Mal Voisin’ translates from French into ‘Chateau of the Bad Neighbor’. Regardless of questionable syntax, it, in one form or another, is something that most of us can identify with.
The Chateau du Mal Voisin of the illustration here is fortunately not local. It is at the southeastern corner of the interchange of South Cochran Avenue and Venice Boulevard, just west of the Mid City district of Los Angeles. The picture was taken last December. The Chateau has been expanded extensively since then. Not only is it now larger than some of the two bedroom apartments on West Cologne Street in the background, but it has a spacious yard, a parking space for the occupant’s sedan, an ornate wrought iron security door, and, of all things, a mailbox. No building permits were issued. The resident pays neither a mortgage nor rent to live in this expensive neighborhood.
Those who do pay either a mortgage or rent to live here pay too much to contend with this in their neighborhood. Locally generated tax revenue is more than adequate to prevent this from happening, even if such prevention were to involve assuming the expense of providing more socially acceptable accommodations for the houseless. To be brutally blunt, this is unacceptable.
This certainly should not imply that the Community is not concerned for their houseless members. Like our local Community, the Mid City Los Angeles Community is remarkably generous and gracious in regard to helping their houseless neighbors improve their respective situations. In fact, that is what makes this Chateau du Mal Voisin so intolerable. It expresses a complete lack of appreciation for the graciousness of the Community.
Technically, people should not inhabit public spaces. The houseless do so only because they lack other options. Most attempt to be discrete and respectful of the Community, just as most of the Community is so respectfully accommodating and tolerant.
A Chateau du Mal Voisin such as this certainly confounds tolerance.
Boulder Creek was evacuated yesterday because of the advancing CZU Lightning Complex Fires that were started just after midnight on August 16. Brookdale and Ben Lomond were evacuated later. Evacuation of Felton began early this morning, less than a day after some of those evacuated from the other Communities had set up camp around town.
Ash and burned leaves had been falling from the sky in several regions, particularly between Los Gatos and Scott’s Valley. Smoke is unusually thick, and had been heavier in the Santa Clara Valley than forest fire smoke had ever been in history.
More information can be found online. However, accurate and practical information is scarce. Presently, some ‘updated’ maps show that the fires are confined to the same few acres near the coast. Others show three larger but still confined fires. The current extent of the fires or combined fire is unknown.
This is an unsettling situation to say the least. These fires have already burned several homes, and will likely burn more, leaving several or many people homeless.
As I mentioned last week, other obligations presently prevent me from writing new posts, perhaps for several weeks. For now, this old article from May of 2019 will be recycled.
Fake environmentalism is a HUGE topic, so for now, will be limited
to fake environmentalism as justification for the eviction of
homeless encampments.
The yellow triangle in the picture above was the site of the
Hero’s Camp, which was more commonly known as Ross Camp, and located
behind Ross Dress For Less in Gateway Plaza in Santa Cruz. It is gone
now. This satellite image was taken by Google Maps prior to the
development of the Camp. I did not get pictures of the camp while
inhabited, but you have likely seen enough other camps in the news to
imagine what it looked like.
It really was as big as it looks, and really did exhibit all the
problems that you hear about in the news, although not to such an
exaggerated degree. Not everyone there used syringes to inject
illicit narcotics. Not everyone there was an alcoholic. Not everyone
was violent, from somewhere else, or a criminal. This is not about
such issues anyway. It is about how the two hundred or so unhoused
people who lived here affected the environment.
Was there trash? Of course there was. Was it more than what two
hundred people who live in homes generate? No. Houseless people do
not generate as much trash as the housed, simply because they lack
resources to purchase the commodities from which so much trash is
generated. The houseless certainly do not waste as much as the
housed. Their trash just happens to be more visible for outsiders who
do not know any better to see.
Furthermore, what is so typically described and perceived as trash
is actually the belongings of those who live in such camps. Without
closets, cabinets or furniture, our belongings would look about the
same, except much more voluminous. When we take just some of the
belongings that we don’t want or need and put them out in front of
our homes, it is a garage sale, and likely amounts to much more than
individual homeless people own.
The satellite image from Google Maps below shows the neighborhood
where my grandparents lived in Felton, less than seven miles north of
where the picture above was taken. Their old home is right in the
middle of the picture. There were not so many other homes there when
they arrived, just as World War II was ending. They lived a
relatively modest lifestyle, on a small suburban parcel. They were
not concerned about the environment.
Why should they have been? Even now, the people who live in homes
here can generate as much trash as they want to, and no one will
complain about it. They can fill their homes with their belongings,
and put them neatly away in closets, cabinets and drawers. There are
alcoholics in this neighborhood, as well as a few who are addicted to
illicit narcotics. Some are criminals. Some are violent. Few are
native. Again, this is off the main topic.
None of that is visible in this satellite image anyway. What it
shows instead is how the lifestyles of those who live in homes are
more detrimental to the environment than the lifestyles of those who
lack homes. This picture is the same scale as the picture above, so
you can see that only a few homes would fit into an area comparable
to that in which about two hundred unhoused people lived. Only a few
people live in each of these few homes.
What that means is that two hundred people like those who lived at
the Hero’s Camp live dispersed over a much larger area, on land from
which trees and vegetation needed to be removed. They all live in
homes that are made of wood derived from trees that grew in forests.
These homes are furnished with synthetic plaster, carpet, paint,
glass, vinyl, metals and all sorts of materials that needed to be
quarried, processed or manufactured.
It doesn’t end there. These homes consume energy for heating,
lighting and whatever else that gas and electricity are used for.
Cars driven by those who live in homes are also constructed from raw
materials, and then need fuel to function. Water is consumed as if it
were not a very limited resource. Much of it gets mixed with soaps
and detergents before going back into the environment. Chlorine
volatilizes from chlorinated swimming pools.
Then there are the landscapes and gardens, the parts of domestic lifestyles that we actually believe to be beneficial to the environment. They contain exotic (non-native) plants that compete with native species, and interfere with natural ecological processes. Irrigation of the landscapes stimulates growth of redwoods, and accelerates decay of oaks. Soil amendments, fertilizers and some of the pesticides change the chemistry of the soil and ground water.
Just compare these two pictures. As bad as the mess at Hero’s Camp
was, the two hundred people who lived there were less detrimental to
the environment and the local ecosystem than those who live in just a
few of the homes visible in the picture below. Those who claim to be
concerned about the environment should be more concerned about the
ecologically detrimental lifestyles of those who live in homes than
those who lack homes.
(Incidentally, the title was changed slightly from the original post [in another blog] to conform to the meme of ‘Hypocrisy’.)
Felton has certainly changed since my grandparents arrived in the early 1940s. So many more homes have been built around their formerly isolated home on Ashley Street. A supermarket and two big drug stores are within walking distance of Downtown. There are more people and traffic here in Felton now than there were in Sunnyvale when they left.
Wow, Sunnyvale has certainly changed as well.
Yet, nature is still natural. The second growth redwoods are getting to be eighty years older than they were back then. So are some of the old oaks and firs. Otherwise, the forest and all the flora and fauna in it function now like they did back then.
Dogs enjoy nature too.
It has been slightly more than a year since I wrote ‘Fake Environmentalism‘, about the misconception that homelessness is more detrimental to the environment than domestic lifestyles are. That article was more about how domestic lifestyles affect the environment in ways that few of us give much thought to, rather than the relatively minimal impact of homelessness.
We all have seen pictures of the most horrendous of homeless encampments, which are typically inhabited by those afflicted by functionality compromising mental disorder. Encampments such as these exemplify homelessness no more accurately than the White House exemplifies all domestic situations. They are rare, and still less polluting than average domestic lifestyles.
Most homeless encampments are not much to get pictures of. Many homeless people leave nothing where they sleep for the night, but instead take everything with them when they leave in the morning, even if they return at the end of the day.
I could see no evidence of encampments while walking with Rhody through an area where a few homeless people live. I might have found minor evidence if I had looked for it, but that was not my intention. If I had wanted to see evidence of human habitation, we would have walked on one of the several suburban streets in town.
Coastal Cleanup Day is an
‘international day of volunteer action’; but we notice it most
locally, as volunteers are out collecting trash and debris throughout
the watershed of the San Lorenzo River. So much gets cleaned up and
taken away in just three hours from 9:00 a.m. to noon!
Because there are fewer of us in our
small Group than there had been before, there are fewer of us to
attend. Two who so dutifully participated annually, as well as with
most other cleanup events, now reside in Copperopolis, so will not
participate locally. Another is temporarily in Morgan Hill, and works
on Saturday.
This year, only one, or perhaps two
from our Group will be participating, but will likely be going to
Capitola to do so with friends. Of course, there are often those who
do not plan to attend, but end up directing participants to areas of
significant debris accumulation, and helping with the collection of
such debris.
Statistically, for our small Group,
that is still rather good attendance. If we estimate that there are
about fifteen of us now, and one of fifteen participates in Coastal
Cleanup Day, that is 7% of our total. 7% of the approximately 4,000
people of Felton would be 267 volunteers! There would not be enough
trash and debris for that many to share.
In the past, when there were
approximately twenty of us, at least two of us participated annually.
There were more typically three or four of us. That is a minimum of
%10.
Perhaps one of the few disadvantages
to the many advantages of several of us procuring employment and
housing, and some of us relocating to do so, is that there are not
quite so many of us to participate in events such as the Coastal
Cleanup Day.
Fake environmentalism is a HUGE topic, so for now, will be limited
to fake environmentalism as justification for the eviction of
homeless encampments.
The yellow triangle in the picture above was the site of the
Hero’s Camp, which was more commonly known as Ross Camp, and located
behind Ross Dress For Less in Gateway Plaza in Santa Cruz. It is gone
now. This satellite image was taken by Google Maps prior to the
development of the Camp. I did not get pictures of the camp while
inhabited, but you have likely seen enough other camps in the news to
imagine what it looked like.
It really was as big as it looks, and really did exhibit all the
problems that you hear about in the news, although not to such an
exaggerated degree. Not everyone there used syringes to inject
illicit narcotics. Not everyone there was an alcoholic. Not everyone
was violent, from somewhere else, or a criminal. This is not about
such issues anyway. It is about how the two hundred or so unhoused
people who lived here affected the environment.
Was there trash? Of course there was. Was it more than what two
hundred people who live in homes generate? No. Houseless people do
not generate as much trash as the housed, simply because they lack
resources to purchase the commodities from which so much trash is
generated. The houseless certainly do not waste as much as the
housed. Their trash just happens to be more visible for outsiders who
do not know any better to see.
Furthermore, what is so typically described and perceived as trash
is actually the belongings of those who live in such camps. Without
closets, cabinets or furniture, our belongings would look about the
same, except much more voluminous. When we take just some of the
belongings that we don’t want or need and put them out in front of
our homes, it is a garage sale, and likely amounts to much more than
individual homeless people own.
The satellite image from Google Maps below shows the neighborhood
where my grandparents lived in Felton, less than seven miles north of
where the picture above was taken. Their old home is right in the
middle of the picture. There were not so many other homes there when
they arrived, just as World War II was ending. They lived a
relatively modest lifestyle, on a small suburban parcel. They were
not concerned about the environment.
Why should they have been? Even now, the people who live in homes
here can generate as much trash as they want to, and no one will
complain about it. They can fill their homes with their belongings,
and put them neatly away in closets, cabinets and drawers. There are
alcoholics in this neighborhood, as well as a few who are addicted to
illicit narcotics. Some are criminals. Some are violent. Few are
native. Again, this is off the main topic.
None of that is visible in this satellite image anyway. What it
shows instead is how the lifestyles of those who live in homes are
more detrimental to the environment than the lifestyles of those who
lack homes. This picture is the same scale as the picture above, so
you can see that only a few homes would fit into an area comparable
to that in which about two hundred unhoused people lived. Only a few
people live in each of these few homes.
What that means is that two hundred people like those who lived at
the Hero’s Camp live dispersed over a much larger area, on land from
which trees and vegetation needed to be removed. They all live in
homes that are made of wood derived from trees that grew in forests.
These homes are furnished with synthetic plaster, carpet, paint,
glass, vinyl, metals and all sorts of materials that needed to be
quarried, processed or manufactured.
It doesn’t end there. These homes consume energy for heating,
lighting and whatever else that gas and electricity are used for.
Cars driven by those who live in homes are also constructed from raw
materials, and then need fuel to function. Water is consumed as if it
were not a very limited resource. Much of it gets mixed with soaps
and detergents before going back into the environment. Chlorine
volatilizes from chlorinated swimming pools.
Then there are the landscapes and gardens, the parts of domestic lifestyles that we actually believe to be beneficial to the environment. They contain exotic (non-native) plants that compete with native species, and interfere with natural ecological processes. Irrigation of the landscapes stimulates growth of redwoods, and accelerates decay of oaks. Soil amendments, fertilizers and some of the pesticides change the chemistry of the soil and ground water.
Just compare these two pictures. As bad as the mess at Hero’s Camp
was, the two hundred people who lived there were less detrimental to
the environment and the local ecosystem than those who live in just a
few of the homes visible in the picture below. Those who claim to be
concerned about the environment should be more concerned about the
ecologically detrimental lifestyles of those who live in homes than
those who lack homes.
(Incidentally, the title was changed slightly from the original post [in another blog] to conform to the meme of ‘Hypocrisy’.)
Felton League 