Please save the trees!

A new septic tank and drain field is going in at the Calle del Norte house. It’s a bit of a no-man’s land out there at the moment. The sellers still officially own the house; it’s not ours until June 1. But they’re long gone, moved to Colorado. So they don’t care what goes on out there.  Of course I do care, but I don’t have a lot of clout because I’m not the owner yet, and I’m not paying for the new septic system.

Before the sellers left for Colorado, we had all met for a discussion about how the septic was going to happen; where it was going to be located, etc.  In attendance were myself, both agents, the sellers, and the septic company manager. We talked through the details, and the sellers signed the paperwork.

Then I went out there yesterday morning when construction was due to start, and discovered this enormous backhoe and a macho guy telling me he’s going to take out 3 trees, 2 of which were right next to the casita, and the third blocked the view of the bocce court from the neighboring house.

I told him no, he wasn’t going to take out any trees. Of course he didn’t want to listen to me. I called John, who is impossible to reach during the day, so I called our real estate agent, and stood my ground. We’re not taking out trees.

When my agent arrived, the backhoe guy started complaining to him that, “The lady says I can’t take out the trees but I’ll roll my backhoe into the arroyo.” Which is quite true, he would roll the backhoe into the arroyo if he tried to take that gigantic thing back there.

I said, “Get a smaller piece of equipment!” They don’t need something so enormous just to trench a ditch for a sewer pipe.

In the end, after threatening to back out of the sale if they cut down the trees, they agreed to let me prune the trees back, rather than take them down.

By that time, the seller’s agent was also out there.  He was reluctant to let me prune the trees since I don’t own the trees yet (presumably he was concerned I’d do a whack-job, and decrease the value of the property, then back out of the sale.) But I reminded him that the alternative was to take the trees down. Which he could always do anyway, if I ruined them.

Of course, all our power tools are who-knows-where in storage or somewhere, not charged, not oiled, no gas, whatever. So I ended up carving off huge tree limbs with a stupid little hand saw, which happens to be mine rather than John’s, so it was with my stuff and not buried in a storage unit or garage somewhere. But I couldn’t find my nice, full-length leather gardening gloves, so now I’m all scratched up. And sore!

 

Here’s the pine tree before pruning:

And here it is afterwards. I’m so sad! It is whacked. But I can clean it up later when I have more time and better tools.

 

I also had to take out about half of a juniper tree. It extended all the way to the bocce court there on the left. (Um, no, cement blocks aren’t part of the bocce game; it will have to be moved.)

By the way, they call these native junipers “trees” around here. They seem more like bushes to me, but they can get fairly tall when they are old. And they aren’t the landscaping juniper that people from out of the area imagine when New Mexican’s say, “juniper.”