Indio, California: Every year the Motorcoach Country Club hire a company to trim dead palm fronds from the hundreds of trees in the resort. It is a messy and noisy job, but apparently there are two schools of palm tree trimming. One school says let ’em go, let the dead fronds droop where they may, and let all sorts of critters and birds find refuge amongst the floppy foliage… and the other school that require all dead palm fronds be removed. Hollywood postcard look. This resort is in the second school of thought: all foundering flora must go.
For the New Reader: most tall palm trees planted as landscape trees in SoCal are menopausal date palms. Female trees need to be pollinated via human intervention (bees/insects do a terrible job pollinating dates) in order to produce fruit. Fertilization of dates requires human intervention. By a certain age (40-50 years) – palm trees no longer produce dates. Once female date palms are no longer creating fruit, they are sold as nursery stock. The barren palms fetch over $3000 (installed) as decorative landscape in the Palm Springs area.
SIDE NOTE: At least once a year we see a geriatric date palm in this resort throw-out a shoot of fruit. The few dates are shriveled and puny, but still make me smile, give a thumbs-up, and a YOU GO GIRL shout.
Our situation this morning:
A crew moved through the campground with professional equipment to remove any dying (or possibly could-be-dying) palm fronds.
At the same time, another crew swooped-down on our ten-year-old motorhome and gave it a good wash and a wax.
So you know it will rain tomorrow, right?
Palm frond dropping
The crew smiled to us when they reached our palm tree. The tree on our lot had two dead fronds (easily spotted in above photo).
When finished, our little spot of lawn was littered with palm fronds and our tree looked like it had been given a buzz-cut. They are professionals.
It’ll grown back.
We were left with a staggering bit of debris… which was later gathered and chewed-up by a chipper-truck. Noisy!
While this was going-down, I was making a few dozen potstickers for the freezer (Lunar New Year is coming up soon – February 5th) and used a bit of the filling for a nice stir-fry noodle (ala improvised Dan Dan) lunch:
After it quieted-down this evening, we were treated to another glorious sunset.
No filter. Just an amazing sky.
A beautiful and calm evening.
Until my next update, I remain, your brilliant correspondent.
RV PARK: The Motorcoach Country Club