Folks Come To Trim The Tree

For years, the tree by the alley, at the corner of my back yard, has yearned to engulf the power lines above with branches, and was increasingly-successful in its effort to do so. I fretted about how I couldn't stop the tree with the ladders and trimmers in my possession. Every few years, or so, SMUD would send over tree trimmers to keep the problem in check, but I hadn't seen any since the recession started, and I was beginning to think I'd have to figure out some way to do it myself even without appropriate tools: maybe with a trampoline, or something.

On Sunday, tree-trimmers contracted by the electric utility SMUD finally arrived and rebuked the tree for its unseemly ambition.

The folks said that the high voltage power was in the top three lines, arrayed horizontally, and the three lines below those, arrayed vertically. The tree trimmer in the basket didn't touch the top three lines, but he pushed the basket passed the three lines below, and touched all of them. If they carry power, I guess they are insulated.

This is great! Relief for my anxiety at last!

Curiously, the tree trimmers did not touch these branches poking through the lower wires above my next-door-neighbor's shed. I wondered about this: the tree trimmers had the tools and I thought they had the motivation too, but they left the branches alone.

Presumably these lower wires are telephone wires, and not power lines, and thus out of SMUD's immediate interest. Not their department. Maybe the telephone company's department, or my next-door-neighbor's-landlord's department, but not my department, or the tree trimmer's department, or SMUD's department. So, Sunday was not a complete defeat for the tree. The foliage battle goes on!