Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Free tree surgery

This morning, when we woke up, we noticed two large orange trucks parked across the road, bearing the legend 'ASPLUNDH tree expert co.' As I've been working this morning, I've heard various sounds of power saws, bits of tree being thrown to the ground, and occasional shouts in Spanish. It's now mid-morning, and I've just looked out of the window into our back garden, and noticed a man sitting in our large pecan tree with a power saw, along with various ropes and pieces of equipment, and lots of branches and leaves all over the ground. There are other men doing similar things in neighbouring gardens. Presumably they've been sent from the electricity company, in order to cut back the trees from the overhead wires. Which is fine, but in the UK, they would at least have knocked on the door and asked if we minded them coming onto our property first, not to mention hacking bits off our tree. I've noticed that Americans are quite cavalier about the concept of personal property: for example, it's not considered rude here to drive your car into someone's front drive in order to execute a three-point turn.

Added to which, we could have saved the trouble and expense of getting our trees cut back approximately six months ago.

4 comments:

Raquel said...

Hmmmm . . . sounds rather rude to me as well. I know here in MO we can call the electric company if you have trees that seem to be in the lines and they will usually come and trim them free of charge. You would rather think they would at least knock and ask! Raquel

Andrew said...

I thought so too!

foop said...

This being the US, can't you just shoot them?

Andrew said...

I could, but they'd probably be armed themselves and we'd end up with a raging gunfight in my back yard.