Another tree falls and knocks out power, pretty ho-hum.  During our extended rainy season, these outages happen so frequently that we don’t even report them all.

Yet we hadn’t considered their messy wake, until walking by one of the major falls today.  You can see the scene is still in bad shape, in this image below.

The tree detritus poses no threats to power lines, roads or anything else.  However the evidence is everywhere, weeks later.  We’re not singling out this homeowner because you can discover the same trunks, stumps and/or destroyed properties scattered in the hills.

Now look up from the ground, and you can see more trees that are ready to keel over.  We can envision the next storm and tree fall here, so maybe it’s worth waiting for the “timber…” before doing anything much!

After today, we should be emerging from the winter rains.  We are all waterlogged, especially the poor trees.  All week long, there have been trucks cleaning up around Montclair Village.

Normally we drive right by, but came across two of the big trucks with buckets this morning.  It seemed like a good enough reason to check things out and record the tree-related maneuvers underway.

Two bucket workers were busy clearing canopy above some nearby power lines.  Since this area already experienced a toppled tree and power outage recently, the “men in trees” were taking smart preventative actions.

For a while, we were entertained by watching the men aloft and on terra firma.  In the bucket, they were buzzing away at the branches and letting them crash below.  At street level, they were making sure the coast was clear (of vehicles).

The scene wasn’t extraordinary in the Oakland Hills, but your faithful Montclair blogger has become a tree-obsessed creature.