Overzealous

Finally, it is getting summer! The weather has picked up, and if the forecast is correct, there will be up to 29 degrees on Sunday! I’m so thrilled – time to get out my T-shirts.

Because it is almost summer, the trees around my apartment are now showing their fresh leaves. In Japan, it is customary to cut back trees and shrubbery during winter, and interestingly, this is often done rather brutally – for my European eyes at least – and I always wonder how the plants manage to bounce back during the next growth season.

However, it is not looking good this year for some of the trees in my apartment complex. Apparently, somebody from the gardening company got carried away and produced this – I took the photo yesterday:

seriously cut treesThose are very sad-looking trees, don’t you think? I doubt they will survive this onslaught – I mean, how could they without any leaves or smaller branches left? They were cut several months ago, but for some reason, this is the only row of trees that was treated thus, the other three rows were not even touched. I wonder whether somebody made a serious mistake and was told to leave (and not come back), or whether this was done to try out something or other. In any case, those trees will not give much shadow for at least this year.