House Maintenance: What you get for a thousand bucks

Well, Saturday the guys from South Mountain Land Maintenance, LLC, showed up, hauling a huge trailer and equipped with all sorts of tools.

My  front yard has run amok. In the first place, at my behest Richard the Landscaper par Extraordinaire planted way too many trees and large shrubs. The idea was to create a screen between my front window and what is now the former Dave’s Used Car Lot, Marina, and Weed Arboretum. This scheme worked, with a vengeance: the screen grew up to become a solid wall. It really was a jungle out there.

Meanwhile, the sickly ash tree inherited from Satan and Proserpine, the previous owners, finally died outright in this summer’s unrelenting 116-degree heat. Sally, the neighbor behind me, wondered idly when I was going to get rid of the snag she could see over our roofs.

The palo brea tree, a ferocious monstrosity with thorns the size and shape of wildcat claws, kept draping over the sidewalk and threatening to gouge out the eyes of passing tourists.

The olive tree went to town over the summer and was now intertwined with sharp branches from the palo brea, which also had wound itself into the innards of the vitex and threatening to strangle it.

The Texas ebony, another heavily armed xeric tree, had merged with the desert willow to block egress through the east gate. The willow’s limbs had climbed onto the roof.

The paloverde on the west side also had decided to rest on the roof, and several of its limbs were crossed or bending low enough to brain passers-by.

Richard had proposed to take out the ash tree for a thousand dollars. Add another two hundred bucks, and he would repair the landscaping where the tree would be ripped down.

South Mountain came in with a bid for a thousand dollars to do all the work that needed to be done in the yard!

The two guys who own the company recently purchased it, having completed a course to train arborists offered by the Desert Botanical Garden. Frankly, I suspect that Richard, who has been in the landscaping business for upwards of 20 years, had a better feel for what the job is worth. The two South Mountain guys showed up here with a laborer, and the three men put in eight uninterrupted hours—they didn’t stop for lunch—in 100-degree heat. That would be 24-man hours. Here’s what I got for $1,040:

• Cut down the huge, scraggly dead ash tree
• Saw up the wood and load it into their truck, leaving some for me to use as firewood this winter.
• Prune out vast quantities of viciously thorny palo brea brush—they must have cut out at least half the canopy
• Prune similar amounts from the palo verde
• Load all that stuff into their truck
• Haul dirt, build a mound over the tree stump
• Plant the baby vitex in the new dirt
• Repair, reset, and test the watering system
• Set about a dozen large rocks into the new dirt mound
• Haul in and spread about two or three inches of gravel over the dirt mound
• Climb into the weeping acacia on the west side, climb all the way to the top and inspect the entire tree for weak limbs
• Cut out dead stuff from the acacia; cut off a large limb that’s been trying to eat the lime tree
• Haul that stuff out and load it onto the truck
• Prune three major limbs out of the olive tree; shape up olive tree
• Trim the desert willow
• Trim the Texas ebony
• Pick up, rake, and blower the incredible mess that resulted from these activities

The two gringo bosses, who unlike the older and wiser Richard did not supervise but pitched in and did most of the labor, damn near expired from heat exhaustion. At this time of year the sun is low enough that no matter which way you look it seems to be glaring right into your eyes, making the unseasonable blast of 100-degree heat truly tough going.

Today the yard looks mightily thinned. The contrast with the jungle effect is pretty striking—to my eye, even jarring, since I’ve been so accustomed to the overgrown mess. Even the skeleton of the ash tree cast a surprising amount of shade, so the heat in the front courtyard come next summer is going to be truly horrible. Vitex is slow growing, so it will be many years before that little plant grows into something that resembles a tree. It never will create as much shade as a large ash or pine.

So I’m not happy to lose the ash tree after all the effort to keep it going. It was sick when I moved in, and as Mike the Arborist pointed out, once an ash tree shows signs of decline, it’s too late to save it. Five years of pouring water and fertilizer on it amounted to five years of wasted water and fertilizer. I should have had Richard cut it down when he installed the desert landscaping.

At any rate: $1,040 for 24 man-hours of work comes down to $14.44 an hour for each man. Assuming they paid the Mexican guy minimum wage, the two proprietors ended up grossing about $18 an hour apiece, or about $144 each for a very hard day’s work. From that they had to pay the gas for their truck (and presumably the payment on it and the trailer), the use fee at the city dump, and all the various other overhead entailed in operating a business. At that rate, our gents are not going to get rich soon.

So I felt like I got a smokin’ deal for all the work they did. In fact, I felt I was taking advantage of their inexperience as businessmen—Richard wouldn’t have touched that job for any such rate. Of course, that’s why it hasn’t gotten done: I can’t afford Richard anymore.

Savage palo brea, before & after…