D.O.P.-T.

To a certain extent, residential blocks here tend to have the same kind of street tree. The home owners seem to have got together and decided. Some have cedars, and they used to expand across the sidewalk, especially where there was also a cedar hedge, so that you had to turn sideways to get between them. In the past few years the city has been buzz-sawing off the lower branches, denuding the trunks, so that they no longer have the silhouettes of women in robes, but of cotton-candy. The operation deprived numerous birds and animals of their nests, so I'm happy to see someone vanishing inside one, or a segment quivering, higher up. The denuded, carved out section of trunk was red at first but has weathered to silvery, just like shakes on a roof. This spring I notice that some of the ridges have a yellowy, granular coating. I don't know whether it's exuded sap, lichen, plain old mold, or bird vomit.