Branching Out

When you own a house in the Tropics, as we do, you get to know professional tree trimmers well. Steve's crew, from One Two Tree is here as I write.

I love the foliage around our place. When I stand on our second floor bedroom porch, and look out, I might as well be in Africa, with the unusual trees , many 100 feet tall. I especially like saying the name of the red barked ones, the gumbo limbos (ha ha ha).

But, turns out these nice ornamental things grow -- and fast. At least once a year I need a tree company to keep them from taking over our house and pool.

For years I used Dave, of Banyan Trees. When we met, back at our last house in the 90s, he was starting out his business, and he always said I was a great customer. He'd need two full days every year to trim the trees at our current house.

And then, after Irma two years ago, when our place looked as though a hurricane had blown through it -- he wasn't answering my calls. Actually he did -- promising to come by -- and never actually made it. I know he had far more lucrative commercial jobs -- but still. He had scorned me. I left him forever.

We hired a crew recommended by our gardener Sarah, and they cleaned out the yard -- needing special equipment to get stuff out of our pond. And then last year Steve came by -- and did a nice job.

You can tell tree guys know their business when you can't really tell they've been there. Amateurs just hack stuff down, which weakens the trees and actually leaves them more vulnerable to toppling in a storm.

But -- Irma did something unusual -- she bent over some palms that were next to our pool. They're alive, but now they drop their palm fruits into the water. My pool guy tells me I'm one of his toughest jobs -- he pleaded with me to have the offending palms trimmed. That's happening today.

Hopefully today will just be a one day job -- sort of touch up -- and then we're good until next year.

Meanwhile, I negotiated a settlement with Wifey, who needs a change in her life, she tells me. She wanted to move. I didn't. So instead, we agreed she could redecorate, and two nice young professionals, with interior design degrees from FIU, are coming tonight to get a deposit.

Wifey was going to interview several, but totally dug these girls right away.  No major construction -- just painting and new furniture. The Great Wall of Wifey is apparently on death row.

About 14 years ago, Wifey insisted we needed a semi custom wall unit from Blackwelders, the nice furniture place in the Gables. The thing cost $11K, and I used to complain about the cost to Barry during our morning workouts. He named it the Great Wall of Wifey. I figured this would be a lifetime piece of furniture. I figured wrong.

It's now "outdated," and so has to go. Hopefully some of the pieces will find their way to D2 and Jonathan's new apartment -- so at least there'll be some second use for the Great Wall -- sort of the way Brits used stones from Roman aquaducts to build stuff in England...

I told Wifey I'd do stuff outside. We have a nice waterfall into the pond that works off a sprinkler pump. I'm not fixing the sprinkler system -- it need a TON of work -- and we have very little lawn or anything that doesn't survive on rain alone.

But I will find a company to fix the waterfall -- maybe this time I'll get a handy switch to be able to turn it on and off when I'm outside. It was rather lovely -- hasn't worked in years.

So Steve and his crew are chain sawing away. I never forget how lucky and blessed I am to be able to hire crews to do work like this.

At our first house, I actually did our tree work, and once nearly pulled a huge branch from a ficus down on myself -- I had hand sawed the thick limb and miscalculated which way it would fall.

It taught me that Dirty Harry was sagely correct: a man's gotta know his limitations.

And for me -- that DEFINITELY includes tree work.