Not my photo, but such a great shot of Milford trees in Fall. November 2014
[from FB post: June 7, 2011]
Ohhhh just had a visit from the "tree lady" (read: tree nazi). The electric company is taking down "select branches" of an old sugar maple through which passes my electricity, cable, and telephone wires. Alas, the poor old tree should be taken down... I guess we'll just wait for the next big storm to do that. Meanwhile, I am supposed to be THRILLED a few branches are being trimmed.
Someone way back when decided that sugar maples would make for great trees to line the streets of Milford. The effect was stunning in the fall, although the subsequent clean up did diminish a resident's love for them. As they were all planted around the same time, it meant they were also all aging out at the same time - not to mention that sugar maples were not very resilient to modern life such as cement sidewalks, asphalt streets, winter road salt, and heavy pruning due to overhead wires. Those poor venerable trees were not spending their golden years in a nice environment. In short, they were literally dropping like flies all over the borough.
Enter the Lorax, er, Valerie, the "tree lady". I am not sure if her post was paid or voluntary, but she went around town "saving" our dying trees. She literally wept when the electric company had to cut off dangerous dead branches (which occasionally crashed onto cars parked below them). We called her the "tree nazi" because she went to ridiculous lengths to save the dying trees. I loved the brightly colored streets of Milford in the fall and that lush green canopy in the summer - I also loved electricity to my home and not worrying that visitors' cars might be smashed while they were patronizing a local business.
In my post about all the good points of Milford [see: living large in little Milford], I purposely avoided all those sweet surprises newbies were faced with upon moving to town like the Historic and Architectural Review Board [see: mowing the lawn]. Valerie the tree nazi was one person you hoped to interact with the least. In places where a grand old sugar maple had fallen, the replacement tree was usually something hardier, but far less scenic such as an ornamental pear or a gingko balboa. The lovely fall colors of Milford will probably only last a few more decades (with or without Valerie), so I am happy to have lived there while there still was that dazzling display of fall colors.