Yes, I'm A Tree hugger and Proud of It

I love trees. Not only are they beautiful to look at, but especially in suburbia (or, as I like to call my little town, "mall land") they serve several other purposes. First, the offer shade and cooling during hot summers, which cuts down on the need for AC, thus saving electricity, which saves money, which also eases the burden on that old grid thing that crashed in 2003, and it saves on pollution because I'm not shooting whatever it is that AC machines shoot into the air which destroys the ozone and lets the sun in and destroys the planet. You know, the one we ALL LIVE ON? Then, trees also buffer the noise, which, at my particular abode, consists of screaming mutant children, loud parties, domestic disputes, and the unceasing roar of Old Country Road (all the folk unlike myself who pride themselves on their ability to visit every shopping mall within a 250 mile radius of their homes drive by MY HOUSE every weekend).

I have lots of trees. They provide food and shelter for wildlife. Bees and butterflies, squirrels and birds and the odd raccoon that hangs around in the Bradford Pear outside my window, sending my kitty cat into a paroxysm of agitation. I love to sit under them and read. Or write. Or just cogitate.

Life would be perfect in my green yard, filled with gardens and shade and the life that springs from roots.

But then there are my neighbors.

Apparently they stem from a line of humans who are out to decimate, destroy, and delight in the death of every living thing, but trees are their first target.

The presence of dead leaves on their lawns necessitates actual physical labor to remove them. And since that is so onerous (heaven forbid they move their lard-asses off their sofas and away from their wide-screen TVs to put their flabby bodies into some semblance of MOTION) they have taken on Mother Nature and simply hired obscenely expensive tree services to chop those suckers down. Oaks. Maples. Sycamores. Pines. Beech. Sweetgum. You name it, it's been chopped, shredded and mulched somewhere in sight of my house.

I've retaliated by planting a new tree, or allowing a sapling that has planted itself to flourish. It's beginning to look a tad like the forest primeval around my property, but that's going to be that.

Then along come some new neighbors. They swore they liked green. The loved the healthy hedge. But of course they LIED like the rat bastards they apparently are (a dysfunctional family with homicidal children lived there before they were foreclosed on - apparently something in the house draws miserable human beings to live there). They chopped down the hedges. A couple of small maple trees. But they left the grand old sycamore, a twin to the one in my yard, whose branches overhang more of my property than their's.

BUT. They decided a lovely circular brick design thingamabob would look GREAT circling the tree. SO they hired some little immigrant laborers to dig down 10 inches. That was bad enough, they damaged and exposed the roots of the tree. But then I come home and what have they done?

CHOPPED ALL THE ROOTS LOOSE AND CUT THEM OFF!!!!! The tree is now ROOTLESS in a 360 degree circle around its base.

What does this mean for the tree?

Why, DEATH, of course.

Fuckers.