I hate trees. Well, perhaps that is a tad hyperbolic. I don't hate ALL trees. I have a fig tree which I planted and I dearly love it - or at least the figs it provides. And I have an apricot tree, which I also planted (not because I wanted it, but as a favor to a friend who was deploying) and though I have no strong positive feelings toward it (and I don't like apricots), it causes me no grief, so I also have no negative feelings toward it.
But these are relatively small trees which have the distinctive virtue of belonging to me, which means I can prune them and keep them small. The fig tree sheds large, easily gathered leaves, and the apricot tree essentially creates a small pile underneath itself. Their leaves require little effort on my part to collect them and they bother no one else. These are good trees.
My neighbor, however, and many others nearby, have very bad trees. These living behemoths take up ridiculously more space than allotted. My neighbor's tree extends its branches fully over the next person's yard, creating a leafy canopy which precludes him from growing anything other than the occasional and very hardy weed. It extends, in fact, over my yard where it has in the past become entangled with various power lines, necessitating a visit from the power company to extricate the lines ... and cut down branches ... but not nearly enough of them! Its branches grow onto my roof and bang on it, horror-movie style, during storms. And, most impolite of all, it sheds massive amounts of annoying leaves - leaves which rain down during Autumn storms and find their way into the drains that protect my house from flooding. I hate having to gather the fallen leaves from this tree, which does not belong to me, has not been appropriately pruned, and which serves no purpose other than to spark imaginative dreams of tree-acide. But I truly, sincerely, hate unclogging the drains during a storm and fighting back the water flooding the basement - or dealing with a flooded basement if I'm not home when this occurs.
Back inside, drying off, getting warm with a cup of cocoa, I plot the tree's demise. Injections of poison into its bark? Surreptitiously cutting off one branch at a time until it dies from its wounds? Unleashing some insect that will eat away at it without spreading to my harmless trees? Are there bombs that could blow up only one tree and harm nothing else? Surely I could enlist the aid of other tree-haters to eliminate this blight!
The sad reality, however, is that I appear to stand alone. Society has decided that Trees Are Good. All trees, it seems, no matter how dangerous, annoying, or useless. There are whole municipalities which disallow the removal of a tree (no matter that the tree belongs on a particular person's land and that that person is responsible for it) without municipal approval AND the planting of another tree - or even two! This is government intrusion at its worst. There are hungry children, homeless elderly, starving animals out there, and we have to protect the trees. Really?!
These protected trees have been known (every single year this happens) to fall on houses, cars, and power lines, killing people, stranding neighborhoods in darkness for weeks, and causing ridiculous expenditures to haul off the offending branches when this could easily have been prevented by getting rid of trees that are too tall, too large, too old, to pose no danger. In fact, I suspect a plot by the tree removal people. Surely, they are the only ones who benefit from this madness!
Mind you, I am not unreasonable. I recognize that trees are necessary for clean air, that they provide lumber (and sometimes, fruit and nuts, of which I highly approve) and that they can be beautiful. I am not advocating the elimination of trees en masse. I just think that all trees over about five feet high should be kept in their place - should be where they belong - in parks - but NOT in my neighborhood!
