The photo below is of a Mexican fan palm. i am working on stuff i want to capture but it’s turning into a tome. So, let’s go with a thought i had when i found the photo.

These suckers can get upward of sixty feet tall. This one was dropped as a seed into our front side yard by some unknown bird. i thought it would add to the local aura of our landscape. It, along with another planted by another bird dropping a bit later looked like a permanent fixture.

Hey, i’m from Lebanon, Tennessee. i am not an agronomy expert for high desert vegetation. Those Mexican fan palms grew rapidly. i was pleased with the look…but then they grew. When the fronds died, they hung ugly off the top until they reached over 20 feet. i cleaned them up until my ladders wouldn’t let me reach the fronds. The tree trimming guy came out, trimmed the dead stuff off and charged me 200 bucks. i recognized the charges would increase exponentially as these things continued to reach for the sky.

i had the tree guy cut them down and removed the stump and roots. A good decision.

Of course, i had this beautiful Labrador, Cass, who knew long before me and showed his contempt for Mexican fan palms. He was right. If you look closely in the center of the fan palm, Cass showed his contempt: