Life, Interrupted

As part of my manga research while designing my first foray into manga writing and art, I've started getting RSS from several popular manga sites, including TheRumicWorld. Inuyasha Manga Editor Annette Roman has a nice post today about trees in fantasy -- as spirits, religious focuses, sentients, demons, and just friends who protect your home and make it a better place to live. Below, I have links to the kinds of trees she talks about, as well as sequoias and redwoods. We probably need a baobab tree, too....

I have lived in the southwest too long -- I would NEVER cut down a tree unless it was sick and threatening to fall on my house. Too messy a tree? Tough. Get an Arborist to make it look its best and suck it up -- or don't buy that house. I might get rid of something small like a crepe myrtle, but never a TREE.

(You can threaten crepe myrtles and get them to cooperate, if necessary. I dislike white crepe myrtles, because they tend to bloom puny and their husks don't fall off, spoiling their display. So I warned a white crepe myrtle when I moved into a house once that it was on notice and a red crepe myrtle would look great there.

I swear -- within the WEEK it was covered, and I mean covered, in white blooms. Prettiest crepe myrtle I'd ever seen. So it got to live. We discovered it had a Hack berry growing inside it crowding it, so we cut that down (under power lines -- they would have topped it every five years, and unstable Hack berries are dangerous, as Texans know). I fed it crepe myrtle food, and guess what? It's a lilac crepe myrtle. Thus proving my point -- it wasn't a white crepe myrtle.)

Da trees:

Wonderboom (In 360!)


Dragon Tree


Guilty Chinese Scholartree


Major Oak


Chestnut Tree of One Hundred Horses (Despite the legend, don't try this ever!)


Giant Sequoia


Coastal Redwoods


Postscript: New Major Oak link 02/16/2010; some people were having trouble with that 360 site.

I once knew a roofer whose daughter set up an experiment with a 100 watt light bulb as a heat source, and tested composition roofing materials from white through black. Here someone has done the experiment with a house.

I had to arm-wrestle my builder into submission to put a gray mixed composition roof on our house. I wanted white (with medium gray stone bricks, black and dark gray trim, reddish mahogany front door) but even my then-spouse wanted something other than white -- or black.

Our 5 ton A/C unit kept both floors comfortable, using a central stairs column as a heat draw (along with a roof vent). We rarely had an electric bill over $100 a month. And that was eight years ago. I have friends paying over $500 right now, and two couples who are in trouble over their utility bills. Both parties work, only one has a child to keep cool.

http://www.antirad.com/rooftest/

This house taught me the different between a tree on the west side, and no tree. THe temp dropped 15-20 degrees in the master bath after the chinaberry tree got high enough to block the sun. (Yes, I know, chinaberries, ugh -- but the ashe to one side is probably big enough now that they can cut down the chinaberry.)