There has been an ArborMetrics Solutions car and an Asplundh Tree Expert truck hanging around on our street all week. Longer than a week actually. I’m pretty sure the first time I saw them was last Friday when I went to the store. Both of those companies are vegetation management firms usually hired by cities, and I have no idea what they are doing on our little two block street for so many days. All I ever see them doing is standing around their parked vehicles chattering with each other. Seems to me they are getting paid to do nothing much at all. I certainly don’t see them looking at any vegetation or trees.

Sort of makes me want to call the city and ask what they are supposed to be doing other than parking on our narrow street and flapping their jaws … or go out there and ask them what they are supposed to be doing other than parking on our narrow street and flapping their jaws. I might even clue them into the fact that if one wants to look busy, carrying a notebook and occasionally scribbling something in it while pointing off in various directions works much better than leaning up against a truck and, well, flapping your jaws for hours and days. Spray painting indecipherable marks on the street and planting little pink flags for no reason also seems to work for other city employees and contractors who don’t want to have to do any actual work. They look young, so it’s possible they don’t know how to stretch a one day job into a week long job yet.