342 replies to this topic

[Nparker]

If trees are more important than policing during this !!CLIMATE CRISIS!! - and I am not saying they aren't - I think it behooves our local officials to justify the environmental benefit of 2 poet laureates on the city's payroll.

 

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

 

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

 

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

 

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

 

JOYCE KILMER

[rjag]

She's going to milk this Climate Emergency and milk it some more. 

[mbjj]

I will plant a flowering, allergy-inducing cherry tree in honour of this useless city council.

[Jackerbie]

That poem has a forbidden religious reference

[Victoria Watcher]

notice the $900,000 is to come after your trees on your own property not city trees.

[Cassidy]

One really has to presume that the majority of those who live in the COV actually don't want cherry trees on their streets ... or why would they have voted in a Council that pretty much made clear before the election that the only money spent by the COV on parks and boulevards in Victoria would be for greenery that was native to the region.

 

Damn those foreign flowers and alien greenery anyway ... this is the COV!!

Edited by Cassidy, 22 February 2019 - 09:15 AM.

[On the Level]

I wonder if this will be the end of the flower baskets too?

[aastra]

 

...the only money spent by the COV on parks and boulevards in Victoria would be for greenery that was native to the region.

 

I can't wait to see all of those new oak and arbutus trees.

[Nparker]

Any chance we might get some dogwood trees or are these not native enough to qualify for local arboreal status? I guess being BC's official "flower" doesn't count. 

[Midnightly]

why won't someone think of the bees! they are also endangered and those flowering trees help them.. and lets not forget about the humming birds too!

[mbjj]

I once read that the Garry oak was not native to this area. I think it was on an info board at Craigflower Schoolhouse. I'm actually curious as to what reasonably-sized deciduous trees could be planted? All the trees I can think of grow very large and have invasive root systems. We already have enough trouble with leaves clogging the storm drains. I certainly wouldn't want fir or cedar, imagine the shade they would cast. The property behind us has an ornamental juniper that has grown so large in the 35 years we've been in our house, that it is now shading half of our garden and our little greenhouse. Pretty soon we won't be able to grow tomatoes in it.

 

Does the person in charge of Parks for the city actually have any horticultural knowledge I wonder. I was looking at some old photos of Victoria from the mid 1920s to 1940s. Boulevards were immaculate and on the stretch of Vancouver St. by the old Mount St. Marys were lovely small flowering shrubs of some sort. Nowadays there are weeds growing two feet in the air around many tree trunks and signposts.

Edited by mbjj, 23 February 2019 - 09:01 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

I once read that the Garry oak was not native to this area. I think it was on an info board at Craigflower Schoolhouse. 

 

they are native but there is some informed thought that they have done well here only because firs that would normally crowd them out have burned naturally or been burned intentionally by native populations.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 23 February 2019 - 09:06 AM.

[UDeMan]

why won't someone think of the bees! they are also endangered and those flowering trees help them.. and lets not forget about the humming birds too!

 

European honey bees were brought over by the settlers, therefore are evil in the minds of the city council.

These non-native bees are steeling the pollen from the bees that are native to this region.  

 

There is a story on this in the vancouver sun.

https://vancouversun...ant-pollinators

[Nparker]

Jayzuz! Settler bees. We're living in truly strange times. 

[Victoria Watcher]

https://www.vicnews....native-species/

 

“I refer now to the blossom-filled streets which will be emerging in a few days that I think a lot of people consider to be an important part of the city,” Young said. “The council has already adopted the explicit policy of the destruction of those landscapes. We have adopted the policy of not replacing those trees but rather replacing them with native trees.”

Young argued that with these additional funds, more trees will be identified and taken down more quickly, a move that likely would not sit well with the public.

[Victoria Watcher]

“There’s a relative impact that [climate change is] having on the resilience of our trees, particularly trees that are not native. They are suffering, they are struggling. We are seeing a lot of trees having to be removed right now,” Soulliere said. “Our arborists are quite shocked at the rate of decline, which is significant. We’re seeing about 70 per cent of trees removed this year are because of that.”

 

 

 

 

except that Victoria's climate is not changing.

[RFS]

“There’s a relative impact that [climate change is] having on the resilience of our trees, particularly trees that are not native. They are suffering, they are struggling. We are seeing a lot of trees having to be removed right now,” Soulliere said. “Our arborists are quite shocked at the rate of decline, which is significant. We’re seeing about 70 per cent of trees removed this year are because of that.”




except that Victoria's climate is not changing.

Couldn't anyone with a yard with trees in it disprove this ridiculous claim?

[Mike K.]

I'm surprised that Young has not brought the age of the trees into the discussion. Some of these trees are approaching 60-70-80 years of age.

[Nparker]

As has been mentioned in another thread, if climate change is the reason to replace the trees, why would native species be any more resilient to changes in the local climate? They evolved in the climate that is alleged to no longer exist. There's something else afoot here.

[DustMagnet]

I keep hearing that things that are done in other cites don't apply to Victoria because it is too big and too small and too rainy and no one goes downtown anymore anyway which is why there is no parking spots available.

 

They probably found out some other city in the world has these trees and therefore they don't work here.  Heck, maybe the trees themselves just realized that and that's why they are ailing.

 

EDIT: They are also possibly dying of embarrassment.

Edited by DustMagnet, 25 February 2019 - 05:30 PM.