On our way out the door last night, I glanced up at a geeky Spanish Oak perilously jutting his brawn over The Purple Palace and mused "I sure hope you don't fall over before our lease is up."
::night filled with wonderful discussion::
Scene: Next morning, lying in bed with Lauren:
Suddenly (on the time-scale of tree), El Arbol's five decade fight with gravity ends in a deafening crack, crashing towards the ground in plain view as I watch in astonishment. Moments after the crash:
Looking out for our well-being, El Arbol heroically unwound his tonnage counter-clockwise away from the roof, steered his perilously-increasing, newfound momentum over his young peers, picked a clear section of cold, hard earth and set course for crash, with a seismic thud on absolutely nothing, missing ceramic planters, cars, other trees, windows, the house, and everything else of any perceived value. Phew!
...
I'm sure our landlord had better things to do than hire a tree service; such is the joy of renting. In the mean time, I decided to cut a pathway through our new-found privacy curtain:
As an engineer, I had two main questions:
Was El Arbol still under warranty?
No
Why did El Arbol fail?
Root cause: While the fallen upper plumage was in good health, after scaling the Spaniard's still-standing trunk, we observed a disease affecting the remaining lower branches. Said disease migrated into and subsequently weakened the trunk, causing a focused failure just above a particularly infected branch:
The remaining branches on the trunk are terminally affected and the entire tree is likely to die. El Arbol, you will be missed. This quarter's grand total: -1 cat, -2 trees, +1 room mate. Howie is doing a wonderful job holding down the fort:
...
With a sample size of 1, I've determined that lemons float in water, while limes sink:
It's unfortunate that it's not the other way around; I much prefer lemon juice.
While having a particularly shitty day, I also determined that 4 eggs are very unlikely to do the following (entirely accidental):
