Oleg Zabluda's blog
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
 
In Redwood City, where we live, several years ago, a man impertinently (нагло) cut down 2 huge palms on his property.
In Redwood City, where we live, several years ago, a man impertinently (нагло) cut down 2 huge palms on his property. The city council was incredulous in their collective gasp. Never ever did anybody do it that glaringly (вызывающе). Chapter 35 of the Municipal Code The ("Tree Preservation Ordinance") says that before cutting down a tree, he had to get a permission first (clearly wouldn't have been granted) and prepared to slap him with $500 fine per tree and required to replace both trees with the ones of similar size (which would have cost him  tens of thousands of dollars per tree. Мужик явно нарвался.

His defense - a palm is not a tree.

For example, it doesn't have a tunk with branches and rings and stuff. In fact, it most closely resembles a huge (60m tall) grass (like wheat) from hell, which one can clearly see up close. What seems like a trunk is a stem, made up of leaves. Each "branch" is a single huge leaf.

We sometimes see quirrels eating dates right off the nearby palms. Surreal. BTW, since many of you never saw a raw date on a date tree, it looks and tastes nothing like the dried one what you typically buy.

In 1991, when we were still in USSR, Yuri Panchul was already in SFBA, complaining to us on the phone that every day he drives to work in his everyday new car, on the everyday highway 101, past everyday (будничных) palms. "Вот зажрался, сука", завидовали мы ему [1]. Now we do the same, except we love the palms.

Friends of ours complain that owning a palm is useless and a pain. It's huge, provides no shadow, and drops enormous, heavy, razor-sharp leaves on your head. We don't care. But that's partially because we don't own any.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/o3KLZB-ord48fO4FD0tVONMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0

So, what about that city council? After consulting with an arborist and collecting themselves, they amended municipal code to include palms as well. You can fight city hall at most once.

http://library.municode.com/HTML/16574/level1/CH35TRPR.html

[1] Dramatization. In reality, it was in 1994, when we were already in Pennsylvania, but still envious.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/o3KLZB-ord48fO4FD0tVONMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0

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