Dead pines abound at Flat Rock Park

Our lack of respect or affection for pine trees is well documented here at Inquirer Central, so it is with some pleasure that we attempt to have a few felled this week. My only regret is that they are already dead.

A Concerned Reader called and asked if I ever go to Flat Rock Park.

I do, I said, and it has nothing to do with the bikini-clad ladies who often lounge on the flat rocks there this time of year.

“Then you’ve seen all the dead trees?” he asked.

There are trees?

“Yes, dead ones,” he said. “All over the place, and I think they’re dangerous with all the kids playing in the park.”

There are kids?

So I drove out to that end of the county to check things out. Sure enough, there are kids and trees and more than a few of them (just the trees, thank goodness) are bone-yard dead.

Some are well off the roadway, but some of those are near the mountain bike trail that snakes through the park. And one, which I photographed, looms over a picnic area. In one casual trip through the park, I counted about a dozen dead trees, almost all pines, but one looked to have been a cedar. That’s a shame, because cedars are great trees, as opposed to pines, which are the world’s largest weeds.

I called Parks and Rec Director James Worsley and told him about the trees, especially the one next to the picnic tables.

“We’ll send somebody out there to take a look at it,” Worsley said.

If it and/or other trees seem to pose a threat to people, he said he would call Pat Biegler, director of Public Works, and then she would send a crew from the Urban Forestry department to take care of the problem.

“We work in tandem with them to make sure if something needs to be taken care of, it will,” Worsley said.

Thanks, James.

But meanwhile, until the city takes that pine down, I wouldn’t sit at that picnic table.

Update

Back in April, we wrote about a spillway cut into a section of curbing for no apparent good reason that was causing rainwater to flood a woman’s yard and crawlspace. The problem was on Arrington Drive, which is off Weems Road, which is off Morningside Drive, which is off Warm Springs Road, which I was on coming back from Flat Rock Park. So I checked on the spillway.

Somebody with the city apparently took a little concrete over there and patched the thing up nicely, sending the rainwater down the street to a storm drain, where it belongs.

This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 8:22 PM with the headline "Dead pines abound at Flat Rock Park."