Another tree down

As I described in this post, our ‘Desert Museum’ palo verde got blown over in a fierce winter storm on New Year’s Eve and landed on our minivan. Fortunately, there was no damage to the car or the plants next to the tree. We were able to cut it up for our biweekly yard waste pickup using a simple electric chainsaw.

We were very lucky, considering the horrendous damage these storms and the record rainfall caused in the Sacramento area. The coast was hit even harder, with piers destroyed and roads washed out. At least 20 people were killed in the nine consecutive rainstorms that started on December 26.

In light of that, our second tree calamity is a very minor footnote. For us, though, losing another tree is not a small matter, considering how few trees we have on our 8,100 sq.ft. lot.

It all started when my wife noticed this on January 18:

The root ball on our Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’ had started to lift up.

These photos taken from the street show how much the tree was leaning toward the fence:

Acacia baileyana has tiny leaves, but since it’s evergreen, there was plenty of surface for the winds to grip. In essence, the canopy acted like a giant sail, and the fierce north winds (our worst winds always come from the north) pushed the tree toward the south and the street.

Fortunately, this happened at the end of the last storm and the subsequent days were calm and dry. If another storm with high winds had come in, I’m convinced the tree would have fallen over, flattening the fence and the plants on the other side of it, and blocking the entire street.

I called Alliance Tree Service the day after, and even though were crazy busy dealing with far more serious tree business, they came quickly and cut down our acacia. I’m really grateful for their service. We’ve used Alliance many times over the years, and they’ve always been great to work with. A big shoutout to them!

This corner of the backyard looks strangely empty now, with nothing left but a cut off trunk and roots lifting out of the ground. (Alliance will come back to grind out the stump when things have calmed down for them.)

The view from the street is even more startling:

I don’t know what we’ll plant as a replacement, but it won’t be another tree that grows super fast, like the Acacia baileyana (and the ‘Desert Museum’ palo verde) did. As we now know from personal experience, these types of trees are the first to go in high winds. At the Sacramento Zoo, apparently most of the trees that went down in the recent storms were acacias.

There’s a lot of clean up to do, both in the backyard and in the front, but I feel a bit shell-shocked and can’t seem to muster the energy to get going. Maybe I’ll simply wait another week until I’ve formulated a game plan in my head...

© Gerhard Bock, 2023. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.