I used to make jokes about arbor day, as a throw-away pretend holiday, but I do remember as a kid that we basically got little tree seedlings every year to take home. My parents planted them all. I had a kindergarten tree, my first-grade tree, etc...we lived in the country and I come from a long line of tree huggers*. We were going to plant those free trees damn it.
*Literal Tree Huggers. Briefly in the 70's my parents lived in a trailer court with no trees. They bought 40 acres of land that was just woods so they could go visit trees...and hug them. I think the plan was to build a house there eventually, but that didn't happen.
In my last blog, I mentioned we go to "Church" - a.k.a. the Arboretum. Pretty much a couple days after I posted that Church closed. Just like real churches. COVID-19 is making going to any church or anywhere not happening. I am missing spring at the Arboretum and I am bummed.
It was our love of the Arb that stoked a fire to start landscaping in our backyard. It wasn't until we went to the arboretum that I realized "Landscaping for Wildlife" was a thing. Seriously - they have a whole section devoted to it. We saw this pile of brush with an instructive sign in front of it that said, "This is habitat" -- and I was like, well shit...I got habitat. And that's when we started thinking maybe we could do some stuff in our yard.
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| Habitat - Allegedly. |
And we do legit have habitat. We bought our house kind of because of the back yard. It butts up to a swamp. No one behind us. There is a little creek on the west side of our property that leads to the swamp. We've always seen lots of wildlife around. Wild turkeys, deer, rabbits, Canadian Geese, Mallards, Sandhill cranes one year, raccoon, possum, flying squirrels, regular squirrels, once a fox, a few times coyotes, a mink was living under our shed briefly, eagles, hawks, and a whole host of other birds. It's really freaking incredible for living essentially in the middle of a housing development.
With that in mind, this winter Gabe and I started plotting all the things we wanted to plant and do in our yard. A few goals in mind. Plant natives. Make it critter and pollinator-friendly. Have less yard and more habitat. Looking at the lengthy list of things we wanted to do we knew we needed a plan of attack. We can't do it all at once, this is going to take time.
The logical first step is planting trees. They are going to take the longest to grow, so let's get in our anchors. I thought I was really clever and declared 2020 the year of trees. The arboretum also had a theme this year of trees. In retrospect, I probably didn't come up with shit, I probably just read their newsletter, forgot about it, and then thought I was clever on my own.
Yo - if you've never done it shopping for trees is hard. First of all, a lot of nurseries don't actually sell native stuff. They sell things that are pretty and usually not from here. And then this COVID thing happened. Not sure if you've heard of it?
Essentially tree sales that communities do are not happening. They don't have the staff to harvest the trees. My thought is maybe next year there will be all sorts of tree sales? We did manage to find some that we wanted that could be ordered online and delivered to our driveway.
So here is the first gang of trees. Also, we've started naming them. I know if you farm don't name them, you get attached. I figure if I name them I am invested in them. Now if they die, I'll probably just replace them with a similar tree. Sort of like how all the seals at Como Zoo are named Sparky. It's best to not think about it.
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| The new kids in town |
This is Bruce. Bruce is a spruce. Thus how he got his name.
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| Bruce |
The new kid we got as a friend to Bruce is Willis. Get it? GET IT?!
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| I can't wait to ask him what he's talkin 'bout. |
Willis is a Black Hills Spruce. He is going to be a buddy for Bruce. He's a teeny baby, but I hope they become best friends.
Then we have a Boxelder tree. It doesn't have a name, because she is on the green mile. Half of the tree just collapsed one-day several years ago. No real wind, no storm. We just heard a crack and watched half our tree fall down. I would love to keep it because it's big and old and gnarly old trees are awesome, but sadly it's not doing well. She probably has another year with us, and then she'll be taken down...and replaced with others. I can't bring myself to name her. Her other half is the habitat photo posted above.
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| Dead man walking |
This is a blue beech. I wanted the cultivar of this one, but that wasn't happening. Hard to locate and in the time of covid not likely. Her name is Carol. Mostly because we were watching Tiger King at the time, but also the name for this particular blue beech is carpinus caroliniana.
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| CAROL! |
Out near the swamp we have Red. I think he's a spruce too, but we're not sure. He has a new friend named Samwise the Balsam fir.
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| Red and his new buddy Sam |
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| Samwise |
These last ladies aren't trees. We moved a rhododendron from the front of the house. She wasn't very happy on the north of our house in a pretty shady area. She moved and we got her some more friends. We named her Eileen because she is a little tippy from trying to grow to the sun in her old home. We got her a friend. Rhoda, and a couple of cousins. They are twins. They don't have names yet.
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| Rhoda, the twins, Eileen |
Special shout out to Gabe. I provide the vision, he provides the labor. He is officially the sexiest dude I know.
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| He said his goal is to create a habitat David Attenborough would be proud of. I fully support it. |
1 comment:
Willis is so cute! I love hearing about what inspired you and how you are creating an Attenborough proud wildlife area.
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