Friday, August 22, 2008

TREES AND BEES AND FORESTERS 

Have a paper list of jotted-down notes of blog topics that seemed fascinating to me at the time and now I can hardly remember what the thoughts were. What could "Bees and Albizias" mean. Ah, I recall I was highly offended by a rash of tree cutting along the H-2 and most recently by the destruction of a magnificent big albizia at the end of our lane where it joins the main road to civilization.  Its big white trunk and limbs and dense green foliage glowed in the morning sun. A few years ago it had been topped...it looked terrible for a few months, but in Hawaii, everything grows back, and quickly.  Unless you chop it off at ground level, which apparently the condo association did so that someone could have a better view from their lanai.  Ha! I hope the sun shines in on them. Love that UV. 

And the bees. I noticed a distinct lack of them this year when the other magnificent albizia visible from my lanai was in snowy bloom.  Where were the bees?  

And Foresters!  Saw a disturbing TV ad for a Subaru SUV, maybe a hybrid, that was supposed to be so economical and environmentally sound that the family who needed it could now buy...a bigger house for all the kids for whom they needed the SUV.  Of course they'll have to cut down all the surrounding trees to build it.

My  wonderful Druid-ish mother-in-law, who once said she was far more disturbed by cutting down trees than abortion,  got a bad reputation in her upscale country neighborhood.  All the other houses in the developing slope of a wooded area cleared out all the trees to plant putting green-grass for front yards.  She tucked her house away back from the road in the woods and had lots of bird feeders (and squirrels and deer and other critters and varmints...and privacy). The neighbors frequently asked when she was going to clear the front yard. "Never," she said.  Alas, when the old folks sold the house, the first thing the new owners did was clear the lot for a lawn to mow.  Probably put a statue of a deer in the middle of it.