There’s an avocado tree in my neighbor’s yard that covers half of my roof. Every few years someone will cut off its branches at my property line and I’ll be able to walk into my office during the day without having to turn on all the lights. Then in a few months the tree grows bigger than it was before, which means it spreads out over three property lots. My home sits on part of what used to be a small avocado orchard. Five little houses now exist where a hundred years ago there was a farmhouse and trees. The farmhouse, remodeled, still stands. The other souvenir of the orchard days is my neighbor’s avocado tree. I’ve never seen a larger, healthier avocado tree in all my years of driving past California’s orchards. Imagine every type of terrain, from flatlands to the steepest of hillsides, coated with avocado trees. California is currently the leading producer of avocados in the United States. So when I say my neighbor’s tree is big and hearty, I’m not exaggerating. The thing about avocado trees is that they don’t like having anything grow under their shady bowers. So if you put one in your back yard you should count on having a lot of bare dirt or putting down pallets of brick pavers. Such is the case in my neighbor’s teensy tiny back yard. Nothing else grows there. Another thing about avocado trees is that they never drop all their leaves seasonally. They drop them all the time. The tree stays green all year long and you have to rake up huge brown leaves every week. They are like golden retrievers whose coats are never thin and yet who shed fur by the bucketful. Every day it’s mop up dog hair and rake avocado leaves. My advice is to have one or the other but not both. The space between my neighbor’s gargantuan avocado tree and my house is perhaps eight feet. There’s a three-foot wide easement between my stucco walls and his concrete fence, creating a nifty little walkway that used to be a perfect escape route for thieves running away from police. They would dash between our houses, run into my backyard, leap the back fence, and vanish. That’s why I decided to add a barrier in the shape of a wooden gate. This gate may be a deterrent to human marauders but it serves as a handy foothold for possums, skunks, raccoons, coyotes and the occasional peacock. The gate also makes it inconvenient for me to easily rake up fallen avocado leaves. Nah, who am I kidding? I don’t do that any more. The gardeners use their leaf blowers. What I continue to do is pick up avocados that fall on my roof and roll off onto my walkway. Have you ever heard an avocado land on a composite shingle roof, or any roof for that matter? My roof is five layers thick, what with never removing the old before laying on the new. You’d think that much material would be soundproofing, but no. Whether from a distance of five feet or twenty, the fruit of the tree lands like a small airplane. BAM! Take a hundred-year-old avocado tree in the very best of health due to lack of competing vegetation and roots dug deep into the alluvial fan of our local mountain runoff and what do you get? You get fruit with pits the size of large oranges surrounded by inches of luscious meat covered by alligator skin rind. Each avocado weighs at least a pound or more. What makes them even more unique is that they only decide to fall off at night, very late at night when I’m fast asleep in the room closest to the tree. BAM! I jerk awake, my heart pounding. Sometimes I wake up after I’m already sitting up and shouting, “What!?” I listen intently for the sound of footsteps or heavy breathing outside my window. Then I realize it was an avocado falling on my rooftop. “!@#$%^&* avocados!” I mutter and flop back down, snoring. Ten minutes later, BAM! Last month my neighbor told me he wants to trim his tree and he’d need to work on my side of the fence. I told him do whatever he wants; it’s his tree. But wait! Don’t climb up on my roof this time. The shingles are too brittle from age. They’ll crack; he’ll slide off and break his neck. Then his widow will have to buy me a new roof. He promised he wouldn’t. You know when I told you nothing grows beneath his avocado tree? I kind of lied. Nothing did when he first moved in. Then one day he was in his backyard when he should have been at work and I was changing my clothes in my bedroom and accidentally flashed him via the window that looks into his yard. He panicked and ran. The next day he came home with a ficus tree that he planted right in our line of view. To help prevent a repeat flash, he hammered a two-foot trellis on top of our shared wall. He needn’t have bothered. I’d learned my lesson. However, for the next umpteen years I had the pleasure of opening the blinds of that window with confidence, knowing I’d only see white latticework and green ficus. When he asked me last month if he could trim his tree, I assumed he meant the avocado. Yes and no. First he removed the ficus and while doing so the trellis fell off. Then he replaced the trellis and secured it with two-by-fours, from my side of the yard. Aha! That’s what he was asking me! Sure. Go right ahead. Just stay off my roof. Two nights ago I awoke to BAM! It must be avocado falling season because that’s all I heard. No raccoons squeaking, no possums climbing. Just BAM! Good. Fine. Maybe the gardeners will find salvageable guacamole fixings when they come next week. This morning I awoke to the sound of chainsaws and falling tree limbs. The workers considerately waited until 8 am to start. I listened carefully. No. They weren’t on my roof. That was good. Soon after, I went outside to see what all the noise was about. I noticed the tallest tree limbs moving and caught glimpses of a red-shirted man grabbing hewn branches and hauling them to the neighbor’s side in order to drop them in his back yard. Nicely done! That meant I wouldn’t have to deal with felled logs on my side. While the mystery climber was working, a few more avocados dropped on my little walkway. I figured I’d wait until the chainsaw massacrers were done for the day before I tried to retrieve the fallen fruit. It seemed the safest thing to do. Before they left, those very considerate chainsaw mutilators came over to my side of the fence and picked up all the debris—leaves, limbs, fruit—in front of the gate and hauled it away. All that remained were seven or eight hefty avocados that had dropped on my back yard side of the gate. Once they’d driven off, I felt it was safe to go avocado fishing. The catch is in a bag waiting for my daughter. I’d eat them myself but I can’t digest them, and isn’t that just sad? While I was out harvesting, I glanced up to see what was left of the tree. All the limbs covering my house are still there, just thinned out a bit. Nothing is leaning heavily on the electric power lines anymore. That’s nice. The only issue is that now I can see how much fruit remains dangling from the surviving limbs. There’s nothing below them to dampen their trajectories when their stems break. Dozens and dozens of heavy avocados are swaying in the cool breeze right above my bedroom ceiling. I think I’m in for some interesting evenings, starting tonight. You can picture it, can’t you? Snore. BAM! Bolting upright shouting, “What?!” Careful listening, falling back on my pillow, snoring. Then BAM! and repeat. !@#$%^&* avocados. (Footnote: since writing this I found the world’s biggest avocado waiting for me by the side of my house. I’d heard it fall while I was watching a Bollywood musical, that’s how loud it was. I decided to eat it despite blood type diet warnings. It was delicious every other day for a week and a half, that’s how big it was. Now I’m waiting for the next one to fall. Forget what I said about !@#$%^&*s. That avocado tree is a pretty good deal.)