I agree with Sheila. Actually, when I read the title my first thought was how lucky you are to have an old pomegranate. Ours are all young....okay, a couple have been in the ground for several years; I planted another last fall, but am not sure it survived the summer. They are attractive plants, in a blinding sort of way.

Thanks - I love it. We see it out our bedroom window, and every season it puts on a show (except mid -winter, which does not last very long here). I have been trying to get my DH to agree to get the dead wood out of it for years, but he liked the sculptural look of the base of it, and had a theory that even the old dead parts were helping to hold it up. So, I was not unhappy when the Fire Dept flagged it as needing work. It is still standing upright just fine now - in fact, even better. We think it may actually have been planted by his great grandfather, who planted fruit trees all over the property, and lived here from 1905 until about 1915, when he sold the house to his son, after his (the Great Grandfather's) wife died.

Jackie

It doesn't look terribly different but yet visibly improved, and I wonder if it didn't breathe a sigh of relief that "the dead stuff" is finally gone. It seems like human nature to let things that aren't critical go until for some reason being forced into action, and then wondering why you didn't d it sooner!

You are exactly correct, Ingrid. We are being forced to deal with some stuff in our garden which I have been ignoring for years, as it (whatever it was), kept growing and blooming, and seemed happy. The next place is way back at the back of our property, where there is a sort of tiny forest of old volunteer plums, some native trees, and some ornamental bushes planted who knows when, as well as a "fig forest". The fig forest was presumably started by one fig tree planted on purpose, but they are so good at propagating themselves that we now have several, all of which produce yummy figs (which is more than I can say for the volunteer plums which also are there). Also there is a 70 ft tall Scarlet Oak, which sends branches all over the place among the other trees. The Fire Dept's comment about that area was "separate the trees so they are not touching each other" Ha! Well, we will start in small bits, and see how far we get.

Jackie

The Fire Dept's comment about that area was "separate the trees so they are not touching each other" From several sports forums, the response that came to my mind:

Those trees told the Fire Department to hold their beer.

I've always lived in the east and most of the time where there was weather. Even on the Gulf Coast where ice storms were seldom, winds of hurricane force were common. The after picture of the well spaced bare branches hit me as impossible because those branches in my mind would have broken from the weight of ice.

And if not ice, wind would take them out.

Here we see trees toppled when there are not other same sized trees for their roots to intergrow with . Get the soil wet enough and they fall over. Which might be a problem with spacing out big trees in your part of the world.

One wonders how "trees not touching each other" would discourage a fire in the least, unless the fire was very small and very shy.

I agree with both of you, but the state of CA (which these rules came from) seems to have a theory that fires will not leap from tree to tree if the trees are not touching each other. You and I know, and anyone who has seen strong winds knows, that this is nonsense. If it is bone dry and over 90 degrees F, and the hot wind is blowing very fast, dainty pruning around the garden will not stop a large fire, no matter how much you prune. It might stop a fire if it was, as you say, very small and very shy, or if the fire was actually a single house fire, not a wildfire, and was being fought by 5 fire engines all for that one house, which happened to our house once.

We do have friends who have enormous properties of 5-10 acres, and do not have gardens at all, but rather acres of watered and mowed lawns with tiny low flower beds around their houses, and only a very few trees. That will help, of course, but we live in an old neighborhood with lots and lots of mature lovely trees, and mostly older, large and/or historic homes on quarter acre lots with lots of bushes, etc. (One of the "rules" is to remove ...this and that... "out to 100 ft away from your house" My comment to the fire person was that to follow that rule, I would have to knock down 3 of my neighbors nearby houses, and I think they would object). The written rules if actually enforced would make everyone have to bulldoze their properties and cover them with concrete, so they don't try to enforce them as written - the fire person told us that our local fire department decided what part to enforce - I am glad of this, but it is NOT good governance. (One town actually passed a law saying 100% of the homes in that town had to clear a space of 5' entirely around their houses, and pave it with concrete. They decided to rescind that law after the outraged residents circulated a petition to get a measure put on the ballot to recall the entire City Council (which you can do for any ror no reason in CA). I regard the exercise as mostly cosmetic, but so far it has made me get some work done which was needed in the garden any way, and that is OK.

Jackie