'Have saw, will travel,' reads the card of a man

There's always a gun for hire. Pay a certain person something and they'll kill anyone. These local tree companies should be driven out of business for what they do. Some developer pays them and they knock down anything in the way to build a house.

What if these tree companies were boycotted and picketed? What if every time a tree company kills a tree illegally, they have their home base/office picketed - not the site they are working on, but their actual place of business?

If these companies start getting bad reputations and losing business, they might think twice before they illegally killed trees in Coconut Grove for a price and we might end up with just the tree companies with a conscience.

The next house to keep close watch on is the one on Day Avenue and Gifford Lane. The developers here, particularly an old lady who lives on the block, does not care about following laws. She prefers paying fines rather than protecting the foliage and she likes to overbuild with her partners. You can see their work on Indiana Street at Shipping. You can't miss it.

This week, after a two hour discussion, the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board (HEP) which was made aware of the oaks on the property where the duplex is planned for Gifford Lane. The Board denied the appeal but did lay down conditions to protect the mature oaks during construction. Let's hope neighbors keep a watch out for this. They were told to place fencing around the trees to protect them during construction and regular inspections are being asked for.

The HEP Board also asked for phased canopy pruning and minor design modifications and a tree bond, which I don't know if that matters to developers.

In the end, a large white duplex will take over that corner of the Grove, with hopefully mature trees surrounding it. In a perfect world, the structure would not be too close to the trees and allow them to grow, but in this case. they are quite close to the structure.