Comments on: The Great Galveston Summer Tree Carving Festival

By: movocelot

movocelot — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:29:34 +0000

Oh kjb! you want to make “The Giving Tree“ about tree-sex!?
I’ll bet Shel Silverstein had the tree doing its woody best to propagate, but, people kept mowing the baby sprouts down! In the end, people decide where & when trees grow…
Re: the book, I happen to like that it’s a Downer and the tree gives its all & ends a stump - kids need some sadness.
Yet on your opinion: “we can always renew. Trees are renewable and expendable. That’s the real reason why they are so great!”
For oaks sake! a really good tree takes half a century to grow! Shopping malls and feeder roads have a much shorter timeframe than that.
I really wish the city would insert (& water/protect) some little live oaks among the big guys along MacGregor, Main, Rice… to get a running start on preserving the canopy, when the inevitable tree deaths occur.

By: kjb434

kjb434 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:00:48 +0000

The giving tree was so busy being thankless that it forgot to reproduce. It could have produced many trees that could serve the boys future children and grand children.

The story is sweet to kids because it teaches them not to abuse other’s generosity and be thankful, but for the real world it is fatally flawed. The Giving Tree decided not to reproduce. That would have also been a great act of giving…

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:35:25 +0000

The Giving Tree wasn’t renewable. But she was still great for climbing and building boats and houses and stuff. Also good for sitting.

By: kjb434

kjb434 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:24:32 +0000

The critical thing to remember is that yes this a loss of a great old oaks, but but we can always renew. Trees are renewable and expendable. That’s the real reason why they are so great!

By: marmer

marmer — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:21:26 +0000

Yeah, I was thinking about that while trimming my oak trees. My small oaks were planted in 1990 and now they are big trees. Not as big as the Galveston ones, but substantial. If they plant new saplings and don’t lose them to salt water, it should look OK in ten years or so.

By: kjb434

kjb434 — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:14:46 +0000

As usual, Mother Nature is bitch.

I was in Galveston last Saturday for the annual Sand Castle Competition. Just driving down Broadway, you would think it was the heart of winter with no leaves on the trees.

The palm trees were doing fine. A few oaks did have new leaves and appear to be able to make a recovery (but I’m not an arborist).

This will be just like after the recovery of the 1906 storm all over again when many of these trees were originally planted

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:12:41 +0000

I drove down Broadway this weekend, and it’s heartbreaking. All the oaks look dead dead DEAD. It’s really a shadow of what it once was, and I don’t know what they’re going to be able to do about it.

(Well, for starters, they can get their signals timed better — I’d rather not have to stop at every freaking light so that I’m forced to dwell on the depressing sight!)