One of my favorite cartoon shows as a kid was The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. I loved all the Dr. Seuss stuff and looked forward to the special television airings (there was a time that “on demand” was not a thing). I digress.

The Lorax was one of my favorites because as a kid, I rarely spent time indoors, if I could help it. I spent a great deal of my childhood outside, in the neighborhood, running through the “weeds”, as my parents would say. There were undeveloped lots in the neighborhood with scrubby bushes and trees. I would make “forts” in them with my friends, as we ran wild, like a pack of wild hyenas. Our neighborhood “meeting place” was a huge tree in the backyard of a neighbor family, called “The Bid Maple”. EVERYONE knew where The Big Maple was, from little kids to teenagers, we all met there. Some days, the neighbors would look out their back window to find their maple tree literally full of children. Little kids usually were hanging from the lower branches, while the older kids climbed to the “summit”, called “The Three Branches”. You were really hot stuff if you could make it to The Three Branches, or above.

Right behind The Big Maple was a wild growing hedgerow of blackberries and raspberries. When they were in season, we would all stuff our faces with huge, sweet berries, then climb trees. Most days, I would come home for dinner, coated in dirt, burdocks, smashed berries and pine tar. Sometimes, my mother would have to cut the weeds and tar out of my hair, and I’d have a new, instant hairdo.

Times have certainly changed since those carefree days of my youth. Although I still see kids outside, most of the time they’re glued to some electronic device. It’s “normal” to see kids crossing the street, not even looking up from their phones, oblivious to the world around them. Their parents not really much better, staring at screens during social events, while “watching” their kids play sports, or checking their social media for the latest gossip or outrage.

It’s for this reason that no one notices the trees dying off all around them.

Just driving around to take more documentation photos, I’m alarmed at HOW MANY trees are in a state of dying or decay. It’s astonishing! More and more huge swaths of trees die off every year. I’m reminded every single day as I look out my front window at a tree across the street. One year, it was lush, full and green. The next year it was dead and “dried out” looking, like it had been dead for years. This year, I noticed the little tree next to it is now dead, all of a sudden, too. All around this tree are lush, green scrubby bushes, ground coverings and other trees. So what happened to this one tree?

Without soil testing, cutting the tree down and observing the rings within it, or testing the roots, etc., there is no 100% certainty to that answer. It’s not my tree, so I cannot just cut it down and test it. I can, however; tell of my observations.

• Prior to the tree dying, there were a noticeable number of planes spraying the skies
• Prior to the tree’s death, we had “strange weather”, with what appeared to be “oily rain”
• Prior to its rapid death, the neighbor had started clearing and removing scrubby bushes, with a chainsaw, around the tree
• The neighbors DO NOT have a chemically treated lawn, for removal of weeds
• 5G towers are going up all over, more and more

I have noticed a pattern around the area where trees are dying off rapidly. I have a hypothesis, but don’t really have a quantifiable way to test it, as it’s just my personal observations. Trees seem to die off faster when scrubby bushes are removed from around them. It’s possible that the scrubby bushes are absorbing the toxic chemicals being sprayed into the skies and falling into the soil. Once removed, the trees uptake more of the poisons from the soil, destroying them. Like I said, I don’t really know how to go about testing the hypothesis quantifiably.
There is another neighbor, up the road, who wanted a more “fru fru” looking lawn, I guess, and removed all the scrubby bushes from the property, leaving only the tall, established trees. That was two years ago.
This year, I noticed ALL the trees are now dead. They go about mowing their lawn, oblivious to the silent forest of death around them.

The “official” explanation for the trees dying is some beetle thing (Ash Borer) that only affects certain tree species. That made sense, at first, unless you really started to dig deeper and observe. The die off happens BEFORE any bugs are seen. The “official” narrative is that the beetles infect the tree inside (under the bark), where they aren’t seen, until the tree starts to die, then you see them. You notice branches start to die off before the whole trees dies. That’s the “official” talking point. But that doesn’t explain the trees I see from my window. They didn’t have branches die off. They were just alive one year, then bang, dead the next. There are also no indications of any borer or other insects, ever being present in these particular trees.

Additionally, other species are now starting to die rapidly, most noticeably, evergreen trees. Each day, as I drive about, documenting, I’m more and more alarmed at the number of trees gone.

Even more alarming is that NO ONE ELSE APPEARS TO NOTICE THE TREES DYING!

The Lorax would cry, but I’m fairly confident it would be because he wasn’t staring at his phone as he walked.