libraford:

harvestandhearth:

libraford:

Another complaint we get is that when we plant trees, we only plant small trees which isn’t equivalent to the ones we chop down. And it’s like… the trees are small because they’re younger. I promise if you go to the older parts of town you’ll see that they do not stay small.

Do they… do they not realize that trees grow? That the act of them growing is what makes them establish root systems that prevent erosion? That them growing is what enables them to absorb carbon dioxide? The growing is what makes them useful!!! And as a fun bonus- young, healthy trees are far less likely to drop a branch on your head!

There’s a lot of work that goes into these kinds of evaluations that I don’t think people really understand. Like there’s a lot of older trees in our uptown area and we love them very much, but they present a hazard to the man-made structures because they were planted with limited knowledge of how to keep them healthy while sharing space with brick.

Tree boss explained it to me once that the older trees have a black mold problem because they just kinda planted them. Because of this, they’re root bound. Root bound trees get mold and rot. Sure enough- a big storm happened this summer and one of those trees that looked healthy on the outside came down, hit the roof of city hall, and you could see the decay inside.

There is a way to plant trees near streets and businesses so that the roots run under the structures and I think that he called it a ‘root shelf.’ But the people who planted those trees didn’t have that knowledge, so we try to replace them with proper techniques when we have the opportunity.

But unfortunately, in order to do it properly for the health of the trees and the structures, we have to plant a sapling instead of an adult tree.

A lot of the time, I hear people talking about ‘old growth trees’ and how they can’t stand to see us cutting them down. But the majority of these trees aren’t old growth- they’re maybe 50-75 years old and weren’t planted with the future in mind. So sometimes we cut down an older tree that looks ‘fine’ from the outside, but the soil sucks or there’s an infestation or the storm damage is worse than it looks from the outside.

I once saw Tree Boss just… push an adult tree down by leaning on it and the inside was fuckin’ paper.

And its like… welcome to City Planning: where we fix the problems made 50 years ago by people who meant well.

jackironsides:

dajo42:

if somebody you knew for a year said “listen. im just gonna be honest here. i know ive known you too long to not know your name. but i simply do not. i dont know how this happened. im reasonably confident you told me your name at some point. could you remind me please” how would you react

“Oh, thank god, because I have no idea what yours is either.”

seat-safety-switch:

One of humanity’s greatest contributions to the art of creating chaos is the humble U-Haul rental van. All over this great country, people who have never driven anything larger than a minivan are now asked to operate a full-ton vehicle that’s about as aerodynamic as an enormous cube on skinny tires is.

This wouldn’t be a big problem, except U-Hauls, to a vehicle, are barely maintained. Here’s why. When you are fleeing the depressing post-industrial city of your birth to move to a new, shiny town in order to get a job in theatre, you don’t bring the U-Haul back to that cesspool. You just drop it off in the New Shiny Town U-Haul lot, and it stays there for awhile. The ownership of that U-Haul truck is sort of ambiguous, and so too is the responsibility for its maintenance.

Maybe it didn’t belong to Trauma Town U-Haul, either, and nobody feels much like doing an oil change on it if it only benefits some asshole in another state that they’ve never met. After all, that truck could very well never make it back to its hometown before it is retired by way of a haggard father of two putting it into the ditch at 4am. They certainly aren’t going to do something like replacing ball joints, or fixing that worn steering coupler, or replacing the cracked tires when the guy before you stole them for his Super Duty.

Learning how to drive an enormous, poorly-handling, badly-maintained vehicle in unfamiliar areas wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t also stressed out at the time. Moving is hard, even when things are going great. Trying not to run over a Geo Metro when you’re on your fourth run, haven’t had a meal with vegetables in it since last week, and have exactly fifteen minutes to clear out before the landlord sets your coffee table on fire is significantly harder.

The next time you see someone in a U-Haul van, give them a bit of extra room. Let them know that you’ve got their back, and we’re all aligned against the evil forces of capitalism that made this interaction as hellish as it needed to be. Maybe stay a little further back than that, in case they decide to pop a u-turn in the middle of the highway and end up firing an entire Ikea kitchen set through your windshield.