Deconstructing the family tree

We hadn’t planned on this being the day for major yard work, but when the guy from Montes Tree Services called to let us know he had an unexpected opening in his schedule, Roni wasn’t about to let a history lesson stand in the way of tackling one of the oldest and largest projects on her honey-do list — the removal of the 25-year-old pine tree growing perilously close to the roof over the den. And seeing how this has become Roni’s office in recent months, the thought of being interrupted some day by the sound of splintering plywood and crumbling drywall was less palatable than a few hours of contractors walking on the roof to ensure that would never happen.

We had named the pine “Ben’s Tree.” It had sprouted from a single seed brought home from a wagon ride taken around the neighborhood when he was two years old. Somehow it found its way into our front planter during a time when we still regularly ran the sprinklers, and soon it put down roots to begin its majestic rise first to the edge of our roofline, then quickly beyond that to achieve an imposing height we estimated at close to 30 feet.

At least this is the story we’ve told for so many years. The truth might be more like the seed was deposited by a wayward bird. However it came to be in the front planter, the end result was the same. Over time, that seemingly innocent tree thrived in its environment and before we knew it had outstripped our means to maintain it. “It’s high on the list of projects to tackle this year,” Glenn said one day about three years ago. And indeed, then it was short enough that it might have been easily conquered with our small chainsaw or a good pole pruner.

But the project never materialized, and the tree continued to grow. By this spring it was so tall that Roni feared Glenn wouldn’t be able to tackle it on his own, let alone the fact he isn’t so stable on a ladder these days. So she put her foot down — both of them, actually, along with a couple of fists and an iron will — and said there was no way she would let her dear husband take on the pesky pine; she was calling in the experts to get quotes to do the job quickly and efficiently.

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M

ONTES, IT TURNS out, ticked all the boxes for us — not the least of which was price. We’d received a couple of quotes that were far less than we’d feared for such a job, and even though Montes was not the cheapest, Roni was impressed with him and the fact that he is local to us — as in just-around-the-corner-in-our-neighborhood local. He sized up the task quickly, told us exactly how he planned to conquer it, and said he could get the job done for us a couple of weeks from now if we booked him. And so Roni did.

That couple of weeks turned out to be a couple of days. He and his crew had been working down in Livermore, doing work for the city, but an opening popped up on his schedule and he was able to fit us in. So while his two assistants got busy moving objects on the ground out of harm’s way and laying out their arsenal of ropes and saws like OR nurses, Montes himself scaled his way up to the roof and began trimming off branches while we tried to carry on business as usual indoors.

But it wasn’t long before curiosity got the better of us and we ventured outside to see the tree pros in action, and boy what a show they put on. It had only been about half an hour and they had already removed most of the upper branches, carving through them like butter with strategically placed cuts, guiding the heavy branches up and away from the shingles with ropes before dropping them safely to the ground with a mighty thump. The logs got shorter and the thumps a lot heavier as Montes methodically worked his way down the trunk with his saw.

One man on the ground held the rope, using a pulley that had been attached to one of the limbs to guide the swinging trunk sections safely away from where Montes performed his work. Another man dragged the longest branches to the end of the driveway and piled them up for the shredder, later using a wheelbarrow to cart down the thicker sections. It seemed a shame to think that all this good wood was going to waste, especially with the price of lumber soaring these days. And if Glenn might not be as handy a handyman lately, his creative fires still burn; he thought about salvaging a log or two for… what? Carving? A chair? Historical reference?

“We were hoping that maybe you could save us a small section when you get close to the stump,” he asked the tree men, “just so we can remember how large it was.”

Not a problem at all! Montes was more than willing to accommodate the request. A 2-foot section, maybe. Sawed perfectly flush so that it could stand well on a flat surface without rocking back and forth, perfect for use as a plant stand. He would even help us move it to wherever we wanted. And because this was a “special” cut, he made a point of letting us know that he had sent one of the crew back around the block to retrieve his larger saw — see how the small saw leaves uneven edges because the cut has to be made in two passes? The larger saw has a blade long enough to make one, smooth cut! We were impressed. And we watched from our chairs parked in the blazing sun on the driveway as he made a slice with precision as close to the ground as he could possibly get.

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A

FTER THAT, IT was all about cleanup. This is where the money we had agreed to for the work really got us something, for taking down the tree wasn’t the end of the job; there was still the task of chopping up the trunk sections and having to cart them to the dump, which would have taken more than a couple of trips in the pickup truck. The tree trimmers had brought with them an industrial strength mulching machine that they now backed up to the end of the driveway and began feeding in parts of the tree — first the 6-inch branches and eventually working up to the massive sections of trunk. The latter were of course too large to fit into the machine directly, so the guys sawed them in half or quarters before converting them into wood chips.

Grrrrrrrrowl! Whump! Dust and wood chips flew everywhere as the machine did its work. We told Montes that we were surprised how easily the large sections of log went through the shredder, and he explained it was easy with soft wood like pine. Oak? Not so much. He said there was no point trying to give away the logs as firewood because in his business he had far more of it than he could ever get rid of.

The entire job took less than four hours, and all that remains is the stump that we must now figure out how to remove. We paid Montes — in cash — and he eagerly offered to return for any other tree projects we might have, even if it was just for the use of his giant shredder to mulch it all down once we’d removed the trees ourselves. It didn’t take great powers of observation to see that we have several other trees on our property that are candidates for pruning or removing, and so perhaps we will bring him back one day.

So Ben’s Tree is now a memory, but we can see the front of the house once again and are less worried about the potential for damage to the roof from sagging branches or sparks igniting piles of pine needles — especially as we near Fourth of July in a neighborhood full of people setting off illegal fireworks during an extreme drought. Best of all, Roni’s husband remains intact for other projects.

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A

T LONG LAST, the masks have finally come off. Well, sort of. Although the state lifted its COVID-19 mask mandates as of June 15, there has been great confusion over where and when we are actually allowed to shed our protective coverings and bear our pearly whites for the public to see once again.

Here in Contra Costa County, we have been behind the curve with our case numbers. For whatever reasons, people here have been slow to get vaccinated and continue to show up at hospitals with symptoms of the virus. Enough so that, even though officially we are no longer required to mask up, many people continue to wear their masks out of caution or fear.

And herd mentality is a powerful influencer, as we saw when we made our first venture to the grocery store a day or two after the health rules changed. Glenn, who has never believed that masks were as effective as we’ve been told, decided to be bold and went maskless into Raley’s. Roni wanted to, but when she looked around and saw almost everyone still hiding behind their shields, she said it didn’t feel right and so wore her mask indoors.

So it was Glenn who got to stick out like a sore thumb as we walked the aisles searching for groceries, checking every passing face in a search for solidarity. And it wasn’t that he was alone, because a precious few others also had chosen to go maskless. The sign on the store’s front entrance even confirmed that it was no longer en vogue to wear masks, but this seemed to comfort few if any nervous customers who had spent the past 15 months obeying health commands even when it seemed no two people could agree as to what they were.

It was only when we were at the deli counter, chatting with the clerk as to what condiments we wanted on our sandwiches, that Roni slowly let her face guard down. And when she wasn’t immediately laid low by a bolt of vengeful lightning from the heavens, she decided it was okay to walk around the store without a mask as well — feelings be damned!

Well no, no one wants to put anyone else at risk or make them feel ill at ease because we choose to not wear our mask, but wasn’t that the whole point of getting vaccinated? If the vaccines are worth anything, then why should those who have received all their doses still have to mask up? It makes no sense. And to those who are truly fearful at this point, then why haven’t they gotten their vaccines? Barely half of our country’s population has received even their initial dose. It’s sad!

Or maybe they see what’s going on in Brazil and India and realize the world hasn’t overcome this pandemic yet. There is concern about the “Delta” variant of COVID that is even more virulent than the original, and given how interconnected our society is these days there is no reason to believe it won’t make its way to our shores eventually.

So while we are grateful for the opportunity to remove our masks for now, we aren’t holding a mask-burning party just yet; we may all be back in lockdowns by this winter.

The change in social distancing rules has been a blessing to restaurants in particular, as they have been allowed to resume indoor dining. The problem is that many of them can’t hire fast enough to fill the demand for wait staff, dishwashers and cooks. So just because we were able to dine in at CreAsian in Brentwood this past Sunday — our first indoor dining experience since early March 2020 — in many ways we found service to be lacking and probably won’t go back until some of the bottlenecks have been worked out.

Not to mention that everything is more expensive than it was, pre-pandemic. Our groceries and restaurant dining have both seen price increases and “fees” for such things as using a credit card or having an employee bag your goods. But we are also spending more for gas (thankfully we don’t commute!) and such things as haircuts. A simple trim is 25 percent more than a year ago, and when Roni gets her hair colored it is close to three figures now. All hail mighty inflation! 

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W

E'VE BEEN ON a bit of a buying spree this month when it comes to our investments, which feels odd considering that we have made very few outright purchases of stocks this year in favor of using the cash to write options instead. But after a market correction earlier this spring left some of those trades under water, we knew it was likely a matter of time before we had to or chose to take assignment on several of the positions.

In June we bought 100 shares of solid state battery maker QuantumScape (QS), which is a recent SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) merger backed by Volkswagen and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The shares traded at a high of $132 in December, but recently fell as low as $24. We bought them on a 33.00 strike put option as yet another trading vehicle in our taxable account.

We also bought 34 shares of railroad CSX on June 17, prior to a 3-for-1 stock split that took effect at the end of the month. Electric vehicle charging company ChargePoint (CHPT) caught our eye recently, and so we added 100 shares of that in Glenn’s IRA on June 24. For Roni, it was the allure of gold — or rather gold-backed ETFs — that prompted her to start a position in the Aberdeen Standard Gold ETF (SGOL) in her IRA. So far, all that glitters is the promise that precious metal prices will ultimately head higher.

Options trades, as they usually do, accounted for the bulk of our June activity, with roughly $5,900 of premium received across all accounts. We mention these figures not to brag, but rather to illustrate the power of selling options to fuel account growth and investing goals. The downside is when those trades go against you, you may wind up owning shares of companies you don’t want or losing shares of companies you do at prices substantially less than the market price.

Case in point is Virgin Galactic (SPCE), which in May declined to less than $14 a share as the space tourism company dealt with a series of setbacks that some thought might foreshadow its demise. We sold a call option on our shares for 21.00 — the day before the company announced it would do another test flight over Memorial Day weekend as it entered a race against Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to be the first to fly paying customers into space.

The stock has since rocketed (no pun intended) higher after the successful test flight and the FAA’s certification of Virgin Galactic to fly paying passengers. As of this writing, SPCE stock is trading close to $60, hovering just below its all-time high. This has been great for the shares we own, but disastrous for the call we sold, which has since been rolled up twice and is still deep in the money as we face the prospect of possibly losing the shares in October for a bit more than we originally bought them for in February 2020. It will take a bit of “creativity” to make this tough situation work out favorably.

Our other trading adventure has been with Lordstown Motors (RIDE), which we bought on a put in late May at $10 a share and immediately optioned at 11.00 for June 25. The stock has been all over the map since then, sinking to under $8 after the company warned it might not last to the end of the year and then losing both its CEO and CFO to resignations. The shares quickly recovered days later to a high of 15.80 after the firm said it lined up financing.

We didn’t know how all of this would play out for our call option until literally the last second of the trading session on expiration day. We needed the share price to stay under 11.00, and it looked like that was what would happen until a large purchase order came in at the close. The price jumped about 12 cents a share to close exactly at 11.00. In options, a tie is just as good as a win, and so we got to keep our 100 shares by exactly one penny. Phew!

Well, enough of our adventures for this month. We hope you have a safe and sane Fourth of July, and we’ll be sure to tell you about ours next time.

 

Glenn, Roni and Ben