The construction on lower Twenty Seventh Street was overwhelming today. There were an unbelievable number of construction vehicles around, equipment and materials everywhere, and a tremendous amount of noise and dust.

The dustmakers across the street

This morning, the tree protection was removed from the spruce tree at #4. I guess it was in the way (!?). They did some excavating over there, and I could see some large exposed tree roots. When there were done, they put the tree protection fence back, but work was done on the inside of the fence. I’m pretty sure the intent of those tree protection areas is that the builders stay outside of them. Later they filled in the area they excavated. It’s too bad that Urban Forestry does not have the tools to effectively manage this kind of thing. Some of the builders are more respectful of our neighbourhood trees than others. In this case, there isn’t a lot to protect, since a few months ago they stripped every branch off up to a height of about 25 feet.

The view from here

As ugly as it looks, I’m not too concerned about all the building materials next door. They’re working on the interlock driveway and they should have it done in a few days. In any case, so far those guys have been very respectful and they’re building a lovely house, so I’ll get over the short term mess.

Fall Work in Long Branch

Meanwhile there are still quite a few trees around here unaffected by the building frenzy here in The Klondike Long Branch, and the leaves are falling like rain. Today I had the heavy Tonka equipment out, helping with leaf collection.