Archive: January 21, 2022 - Gary Borders

Stop Mutilating the Myrtles!

As I drove to work earlier this week, I spied a familiar if discouraging sight. Perched on top of a step ladder that was listing dangerously to the left, a landscape worker brandished some shears with which he was mutilating a crape myrtle tree. He lopped off the previous year’s growth to leave an amputated tree topped with knobs, from which spindly branches will eventually emerge, often not strong enough to hold their heads up in a summer rain. If it’s January in East Texas, it is time to send landscapers out across residential lawns and businesses to murder myrtles (it’s not strictly...

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