Saturday, June 16, 2007

Timber!

Last Friday, a short but violent storm swept through Toronto. Lots of branches were left littering the streets, and, sadly, there was an arboreal casualty.

My boss and I were standing in my office, and saw the wind throwing about leaves, bits of paper and dust. Then a large, heavy-bottomed garbage can skidded past the window. A moment later, a coworker rushed in and asked, "Did you see that?"

"Yeah, the big garbage can? That was crazy!"

"No. Not the garbage can - the tree!"
Tree 1
That's the bus shelter on the right, there - just to give you an idea of scale.

From another window, coworkers saw a bunch of people waiting at the bus stop suddenly gasp with surprise and run away. The large, lovely maple tree that for so long had sheltered the public transit riders suddenly turned on them and tried to squash them.
Poor Tree2

We were surprised to see just how shallow the roots had been.
Jen in hole

This week, a cleanup crew came and chopped up and hauled away all the dead, dry branches. Then they tipped the tree back over into its hole.

Shoddy

Interesting fix.

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