Season Dos (2009)

The fall of 2008 was very unproductive compared to the spring. Most of it was spent trying to keep everything we had planted alive and trimming up many of the hedge apple trees around the perimeter of our house. Side note: if you buy a house with hedge trees be aware, they provide wonderful shade but also produce terrible suckers all year round - trimming is an annual chore. L We did manage to plant three 5 ft. tall Cleveland Ornamental Pears along the west side of the garage to help shade the driveway. Two years later, they haven’t grown much in width but they tower over me at 8 to 9 feet tall. I have heard many people groan when I tell them how much I love these trees especially when they reach maturity. I know they are not natives and they have weak wood and they are one of the higher allergen trees…but I also know that no tree is without its faults. There are many native, weak wooded, seed spreading trees out there that people rave about constantly. Also, pruning a tree while it matures (removing potentially weak branches) goes a long way in growing a healthy, long living specimen. Now, I’m sure in ten years when one of them splits in a high wind I will cry but today they are beautiful and I love them despite their faults J

Ice covered trees

            In the spring of 2009 (I believe it was early April) we had an ice storm. Unfortunately, this is not as uncommon as I would like it to be but it does reinforce the point that no matter how much I want to buy those early annuals at the local markets in March, planting anything before tax day is a terrible idea in my climate (zone 6). It did, however, allow me to take some pretty neat pictures.

NW corner of the property

            I did not get around to doing anymore landscaping until May when I began hacking away at the prairie grass on the north side of my property. As I have mentioned before, we purchased our lot because of the tree line, however, those trees became an issue when we went to put the backyard fence in for the dog. We could not put the fence on the actual property line because it ran right through the middle of the hedge row on both the east and north sides of our property. We also had to make sure when we did dig the posts for the fence that we avoided the roots of the trees so we wouldn’t kill the very things we loved. Along with the trees there were several other things we had to avoid - underground power lines, gas lines, etc. Eventually, we ended up placing the fence ten feet away from the property lines. This allowed plenty of room for the dog to run and (bonus) a 10’ X 90’ some odd swath to add more garden - a large garden that the dog couldn’t eat or dig up (double bonus). J



The finished product viewed from the back deck
(you can tell the dog is already trying to figure out how to get to it)!



A closer look - blue creeping phlox, fox glove, Miss Kim lilac, etc.

A view from the other side

The beautiful hostas were transplants from my mother-in-law and the daylilies came from my first home

This is what it looked like before I started!

            Later on in the summer, an engineer came to our door to inform us that a man-hole had been slated for our backyard. They were going to have to come out and tear up a section of our fence, sprinkler system, and yard to hook into the current sewers. We were devastated! We had just spent all that time and money and now it was going to be ripped apart. Fortunately, my husband was able to talk to the developer and have him change the plans to place the man hole in the undeveloped field behind our house. We had to lose three trees out of the NE corner of our tree line and one of our newly planted Arborvitaes but we decided it was the lesser of two evils. After they began excavation we were extremely happy with our choice. A man hole no bigger than 3 feet at ground level required a 12 foot diameter wide and deep hole  – they would have had to rip out one third of our yard! Man…be happy for the small blessings J



A beautiful double rainbow over the adjacent field (those are the trees we lost in the lower RH corner of the picture)



That could have been our backyard!