The trees are bare

Well, if I were in Ohio, I'm sure the trees would be bare of leaves. And that would be a natural thing. Winter. Cold. The beauty of an oak tree in January.

But it's in the 70's here. And though we're chilly with the brisk, dusty wind coming in off the desert, still, everything is growing. Well, everything that gets watered a bit. It hasn't rained since October. It's really perfect growing weather. In fact, we have been having fresh corn on the cob. And strawberries will be in any week now! The bougainvillea hedge doesn't really need watered and look what it does.




So why is the Phare looking so bare! Well, Mbaye calls it a haircut.

One day the guys were trimming the hedges. The next thing I noticed was the trees had been hacked down to nubs of branches! And they just kept going.

I think it's a French approach to shrubs and trees or something. It's always a shock to my system. I've been teasing them all week. Still, I don't know about the eucalyptus, but the tress along the parking area are a soft wooded things and really needed to be cut way back.

This isn't the first time we've done this, so don't worry. The trees will come back.

It's a quiet week, with just a few folks spending a night here or there. So, it's really a perfect time to do something radical like this.

In a week or so we will have two seminars running simultaneously. One will be training women (the SARA Movement). The other is aimed at teaching folks how to work with kids (KIDZANA).

But for now we're getting a bit of a breather. So look out trees.