When a mommy palm tree loves a daddy palm tree...

... they have a "special kind of hug"... I don't know; I still don't know if I'm the bird or I'm the bee.

There is a palm tree in our front yard.  We have been told it is a female palm tree, because every so often, it sprouts out a branch that doesn't look like a palm leaf, and that thing spouts out little "seeds" that make a mess in the driveway.  And, anything parked there.  Sounds more like a male to me.

When we first bought here, this palm tree was about the same height as me.  I could trim the palm branches without the use of a ladder.  Over the years, it has grown to about 25' tall.  I gave up climbing a ladder years ago to try to keep up with the tree.  Since that time, there has been a young man who seems to have some 6th sense about our arrival, and usually shows up about 12 minutes after we get back, asking to cut the palm branches.  I have been happy to pay him to climb a ladder and cut them by hand.  The last few times, he has had to put the ladder in the back of his pickup truck to reach.

He didn't appear this year.

However, there is a company that is trimming all the village trees on common property.  We came across them yesterday and asked if they could do our tree.  The lady who ramrods the operation followed us to our place, looked at the tree, and gave me a price.  I agreed to the price, and she said, "Probably not today, but maybe tomorrow."

We hear that a lot around here.

We planned to go to our storage unit today to drop a few things off and check on the coach.  On the way, I found the tree crew, let them know we would be gone for a few hours, and to please trim the tree, and I will find them to get them paid.  The boss lady was not there.

We did our running, had a late lunch out, and when we got home...

The tree looks great!  They trusted me.  The boss lady left a note on our door where to find them, and I went there immediately and paid them.

They cleaned up all the branches, but it was a breezy day today - some of the bark that they stripped off blew around, and all those seeds were scattered all around.  Joan and I both went to work with brooms.  Now, the driveway looks as good as the tree.

I didn't want to bring the boat in until the dredge finishes our canal and/or we could get the tree trimmed, because the only place I can put the boat in our driveway is pretty much right under that tree.  This means: the next time we go to the storage unit, the boat can come back with us.  I checked on it today in the storage unit... it misses us, too.

The dredge has covered about half the distance from where it was on Tuesday to get to the end of our canal.  So, that "3 or 4 days" we were promised isn't going to happen... but, the end is in sight.

Hopefully.

;-)