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Away she goes!
PICTURE OF THE MOMENT
The closest Costco is about a half mile from my house, and it’s normally extremely easy to get to. Not today:
That’s a eucalyptus tree, and not a particularly big one, but it had fallen and was blocking 3½ lanes of the highway frontage road. The police had the southbound lanes completely closed, but our northbound lanes were still open albeit scrunching two lanes down into ½ lane on the shoulder.
Eucalyptus trees are not native to San Diego. They were brought from Australia back ca. 1850 to use for railroad ties. Unfortunately, the wood is very brittle and did not make good ties. However, the tree loved San Diego’s climate and by driving around the County you’d never think that they were not native here. They are everywhere!
They grow rather tall but have somewhat shallow root systems. Couple that with the brittle wood, and the poor trees sometimes fall over or break apart during our six-week rainy season or during the high Santa Ana wind season.
We had the wettest April I can remember in the 18 years I’ve lived here, and I suspect the ground around that eucalyptus simply couldn’t hold that massive tree with the shallow root system anymore, and away she goes!
I love eucalyptus trees but they really don’t belong on small residential properties or along freeways. Here’s one of my favorite pictures of a giant in Balboa Park:
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