Our old neighborhood has some great old victorian houses. It is also endowed with a lot of old trees. Right next to us are (were) two 100 year old Canary Island Date Palms. One is about 75 feet tall, and the other about 55 feet tall. We learned a few weeks back that the owner was selling them, as they were dropping a lot of leaves, and the maintenance on them was very expensive.
At first the word on the street was that they were being sold to some resort in Vegas. Made sense, in a vegas sort of way, and we were sort of comforted by the prospect of being able to visit our neighborhood trees on some horrible future business trip. But I found out by speaking to the owner that the trees were sold to Ty Warner. Don’t know him? He’s the inventor of, wait for it, beanie babies. He is apparently outfitting his mansion in Santa Barbra with millions of dollars worth of trees. I guess when you are worth 4.4 billion you can spend a little on landscaping.
It is interesting to see all the work that goes into transporting these old beauties. A day of trimming the tops and bark, another manually cutting out the roots, and then another bringing in the cranes and flat bed trucks to haul them away. We will miss the old trees, but hopefully something new and great will come in their place.