They're hacking at a stand of several huge cedars right now, one of which is at least 100 years old, the rest pushing 70 or 80.
I'm told that replanting, post-building, is "required". BFD, if I may be blunt. A brace of saplings instead of canopy trees, and a McPalace parked where the big trees used to be. In thirty years, I am told, this will again be a "nicely wooded area". FIrst, it won't, because even 30-year-old trees don't look like the ones they're cutting down right now - and they are talking about 30 years as though they will pass in the blink of an eye. Tomorrow... next week... in thirty years. In thirty years I will be seventy three years old. In thirty years the guy directing the slaughter right now might be dead.
I hate them. I hate chainsaws. I have half a mind to go and stand for the neighborhood association board and court ulcers and migraines - just so that I could sit there and vote NO NO NO NO NO NO every time a new house is mooted which destroys more of our woods.
UPDATE
We ran away from home.
So we went out, and bought a cheap laptop to replace the one I gave my Dad - the one on which I was teaching him the Internet, and which died a hard death about a week ago - and took it over to him, and then decided to go out and have dinner at our favourite restaurant, and then... then we went home.
The hundred-year-old cedar is a pathetic stump. I burst into tears.
At least I didn't have to watch it die.