Trees Glorious Trees

The City of Atlantic Beach has a very lovely tree canopy. This is especially true in the "old" section between the beach and Seminole Dr. Now back in the day, when all of my neighbors were young, and some were just kids, only weirdos lived at the beach (That's the way my neighbor described it to me). He said I would have fit right in (LOL). The local gentry and the highly educated didn't live out here on the island. They lived in Riverside or Mandarin; the civilized parts of town. Only people who walked to a different drummer lived out here. Even in the mid nineties, when my husband moved here, the beach was more populated but large parts of Jacksonville Beach were undeveloped and there were quite a few eye sores. However, big change was underway. The economy was booming and so were the builders. Developers were out here in droves. They couldn't build fast enough; and they weren't about to let silly things like trees get in their way. They just bull dozed and built. Well, this was a problem of sorts. One of the things that makes our city so beautiful and quaint is our tree canopy. We were losing something that you can't just go out and replace.Trees are one of the few things that really have an impact on your neighbor too. The shade, the wildlife, the leaves and debris; depending on your out look and such. Some of these magnolias and cedars are hundreds of years old. So the city decided to be pro-active and implement some rules and some fines. Palm trees are easily replaced. So you can still cut those down for free (Hallelujah). However, the hard wood trees, like our live oaks, the cedars, magnolias, and those rare beach pines. Those you had to conserve or pay a fee for a permit that required you to replace it with a certain number of like trees. You could pay a larger fine and not replace it. If a developer cut a tree down with out a permit, he was supposed to be in BIG trouble with a BIG fine. When we moved into this house, my neighbor had three large oak tress. They weren't monstrous like mine, but one of them was large enough to shade most of my driveway in my back yard. It was right along the fence line, in nobody's way. I really liked this tree. I got to look at it every morning from my bedroom and stand under it almost every day when the kids were having some outside time. Sadly, My neighbor died, and eventually, his kids were more interested in cash (unbeknownst to me). We had been told that they would NEVER sell, and I was happy knowing that they were NOT selling. So when the for sale sign went up, shock was my first response and horror was my second. It was like watching one of those domino mazes tumble down. You could kind of see the whole picture as the dominoes started falling but you weren't watching for the picture; you just couldn't help but watch all of those little dominoes rolling down one by one. While they were falling down, all you could think about was the history behind them. The work, the effort, and the story behind how it all got set up.