Or a lesson about parking under oak trees
Overall, my car is not sad. I bought a 2015 CX-5 when my downstairs neighbor vacated the driveway spot and it was obvious I should get a car to take my oldest to school. I’m happy with the car. I’m just not happy with city parking.
One day I was at storage and thought the dents from acorns were especially vibrant. 2024 was a rough year to have a parking spot under an oak tree.
According to Google, “Oaks do not produce high volumes of acorns every year. This is a survival mechanism: by skipping years, they keep predator populations (mice, deer) low, so that when a massive crop arrives, the animals cannot eat them all.” So I went from a few acorns hitting my car to an abundance of extra thick projectiles raining on my car 24 hours a day.
I first learned about mast years while cleaning a park that included a tour of the grounds. The woman leading the hike noted how many and how big the acorns were acorns, saying what Google would also tell us:
“Oak trees often synchronize their masting, meaning all oaks in a region will have a high-yield year at the same time, overwhelming local wildlife that eat them.”
Her take was no one knows when is going to happen. I guess I lucked out it was only once in the six years I had that spot.
The phone wasn’t really doing a good job of showing off all the dents. (Although, looking at this on a desktop, you can totally see where the grid is interrupted with obvious dimples in my car’s hood.)
The other fun of parking under an oak is how much goo ends up on your car. It’s not sap. I like the explanation that it’s tree sweat. “During extreme heat, trees may sweat, producing excess sap to manage stress,” according to Google.
The amount of bugs that show up to feast on sap and then smaller bugs is stupid. When we moved and I started parking in a garage, I had to wash the car thoroughly to make the bugs go away.
Usually my car is not so clean because this city is gross, but the day I took this picture with the smiley face in dirt was insane. I had literally just washed the car and the next thing I knew the car was covered in dust. Like I said, I park in a garage. I wondered if the whole building would collapse
Am I too hopeful in thinking I can get away with washing the car once every three months?
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