Howdy!

(I wrote an update about the trees on Rachel on June 26, click here)

Last year with some fanfare the city ripped up Rachel street and made a larger divider for the bike path (without really widening the bike path itself). They started in July and finished in October. One of the last things they did was to plant trees. Now I don’t know much (if anything about trees) but I can’t see how planting them just before it frosts over is a good idea.

So I figured I’d check them out yesterday. So far five of six seem to be alive. I started at the east end of the bike path and walked to Saint Urbain.

Eight out of nine, alive. Does anyone know how much a tree costs? And what are the costs associated with transplanting one? If I remember correctly there were crews of three or four and some heavy machinery involved…

11/12 or almost 92%. Maybe the city actually knew what they were doing and I’m just complaining to hear myself and prove my existence.

10/12. 83%. Ooops.

11/13. 85%. Getting better (I think).

11/15. 73%. I’ll let you come up with your own comments…

11/17. 65%. Things aren’t looking good. The Google Street view was done in September and while you can clearly see the concrete and dirt, there ain’t no trees to be seen.

11/19. 58%. Hmmm…

11/20. 55%. You would have thought that after the fiasco that was the Place des Festivals, the city would have learned. But it doesn’t appear so.

Then if you notice there is no underbrush, grass, ground cover or anything green on the ground. Back in September when they redid the Google street view there was a lot of vegetation on the median. Now there is none. I wonder what exactly happened…

11/21. 52%. I wonder who is responsible for planting trees in the city of Montreal. My guess would be that the bureaucracy is dense enough that five different people can point multiple fingers at each other in order to deflect blame.

11/22. 50%. Your choice of the music from Jaws or the music from Psycho.

12/23. 52%

12/24. 50%. Your choice of the music from Jaws or the music from Psycho. Just louder.

12/25. 48%. Words fail me.

17/30. 57%

21/34. 62%. I guess you could say that things are looking up.

21/35. 60%

21/40. 53%. This is where it gets kind of personal. As this is right in front of where I sit more mornings than not. The next time the city decides to plant trees in October, it probably would be better to do it in a place where there wasn’t free wifi or other people just hanging out.

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Artsy close up shots of not alive trees on Rachel.

22/41. 54%

26/45. 58%. The final tally. Not good, no matter how you look at it. Even if trees could be purchased and planted for $500/each, that’s almost $10,000 wasted by a borough that decided to save money by not clearing the snow on weekends. My guess is that we’d be talking more like $2,000 or more per tree, which means either they wasted almost $40,000 plus. Or the street is going to look like someplace in North Vietnam after the United States dumped a bunch of Agent Orange all over the place.