Good fences make good neighbors, and all that.

This is a long one.

Our neighbor is crazy. And I'm not using that word in the colloquial sense, as when you sometimes describe a person as "crazy," when what you really mean is that the person is emotional, or passionate, or eccentric. No, our neighbor is crazy.

We have numerous stories to back this up, but one has been particularly enduring. Last summer, before the craziness had fully presented itself, she came to talk to us while we were working outside. She mentioned the pine trees that are on her property—but right up against our garden—and she asked if they blocked out our sun too much. They didn't block the sun much, but they did hang way over the garden and drop pine cones and crap all the time. She said she'd get her husband to cut them back so we didn't have to—but we could if we wanted to.

So, last October, I cut back the branches that were coming into the garden.

That was fine until one day in March when I went outside to feed the chickens and heard her screaming at our landlord, "This is all I have, Christopher! This. Is. ALL. I. HAAAAAAAVE!!" She was talking about the trees, of course, which she had just noticed. Needless to say, I got the hell out of there.

A few weeks later her husband cut back the trees even more than I did, and she came over while we were outside to shout, "Hey! You call that bein' a neighbor? 'Cause I call that NOT BEIN' a neighbor!" Oh, well then. Ever since, we've been privy to dirty looks and shouted conversations of, "Hey! When's that fence guy comin'?" Yesterday she stood on her porch in her pajamas and stared at me through a gap in the trees for ten minutes. It's been fun.

Today, though, the fence guys came. They were very nice and they loved our garden, but most importantly they put up a 7-foot tall privacy fence (which necessitated cutting back the trees even more, incidentally). Sadly, the fence obstructs our view of the old trampoline, the plastic tarp stuck up in a tree, the trash cans in the middle of the yard, and the neighbor sunbathing on the driveway. But that's the price we'll have to pay. For, you know, not bein' neighbors. At least we'll have the memories.

Dogwoods

There are a large number of trees on the three and half acres where we live and we have become quite familiar with the lot. We've come to expect their changes though the year as a way to kind of catalogue time. The dogwoods have recently come into bloom.

Of all the varieties of trees on this property, the dogwoods are my favorite during all seasons. In the summer they are a spectacular source of shade. Their leaves in the fall are always colorful and enduring. During the winter their branches bend and twist in all kinds of peculiar directions. And in the spring, just like the fall, they provide an array of colors that are both vivid and long-lasting.

This magnolia flower

...looks way too tropical for Pennsylvania.

What the hell is this?

After witnessing the fantastic results of Meg's pruning the other day, we thought we would scope out any other trees that need some lopper love. On our journey we spied a mass of eggs left by some kind of insect mathematician. They're cool looking, but if it's bad I want to squish it. Chances are it's a pest (that's just the way this place works), but if it so happens to be a pest eater, well then I think we may want to let it live (I'm convinced that God is a gardener).

If any of you know what in the blazes these damn things might be, before they hatch, please send us a shout.

Bring out your dead.

The beautiful thing about spring is that it is so much easier to identify dead branches for pruning. If I haven't led on to this earlier, Meg is extremely talented with a bow saw and a set of loppers.


On a number of occasions we have shared with you stories about the nightmare of an orchard that is festering in our backyard. Recently Meg has said to hell with the landlord and has started to do some preventative maintenance to these poor neglected trees. What she did was look for any branch she could reach that didn't have leaf buds and removed it. Over all the project took her about three hours. I think the before and after shots are pretty damn impressive.

Where was I during all of this? Well someone has to weed the garden and our lettuce needed a sun screen. Besides, we only have one saw.

*We would like to make an apology to those of you who have left comments this week and have yet to receive a reply. Meg and I have been totally busy lately with student needs, garden needs, need a full time job with benefits needs, and whatever else this wonderful life has to throw at us needs. We love the comments and please keep them coming; I get worried that you might be dead in some ditch if we don't hear from you once in a while. We'll back at you soon.

Flower Show

It's fun to watch and wait for trees to flower. One of my favorites on our property is the magnolia. Does my affinity have anything to do with the Grateful Dead's Sugar Magnolia? Maybe. Or, they're just big meaty flowers and I love them.

The next tree on my list of wait-fors is the dogwood. All year round the dogwood puts on a very unique display of color and form. But for now we can wait, because the magnolias are out and they deserve their turn.

The Sap is Rising

The other day I had the privilege to acquaint myself with a new blog on the blogosphere called Life at Dogfight Cove. They started the site this month, so this is a great opportunity to read it from the start. The writing is great; it's got a good home grown feel.

Polarbear's (she's the blogger) last post mentioned, amongst many other projects, pruning her fruit trees. This has been another reminder that the sap will be rising soon and the season for growing will soon be upon us. One of the projects that we really need to focus on in the coming weeks, like Polarbear, is the pruning of our adopted apple tree.


To be quite honest, we're feeling like our resources for this project may be a bit slim. Probably the most useful source I've found is a section on fruit tree pruning in the American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening. I think we have a pretty good idea of how to do the cuttings, but which ones to cut is still a bit foggy.


Let's remember now that this tree hasn't been pruned in at least seven years. If we were to cut all of the branches suggested by the books we've read, we'd be left with nothing more than a stump. I know we should take it slow, so what branches should we look for to absolutely remove? I think we're leaning towards cutting all the branches that are rubbing and maybe just a spike or two from the middle. If you have any experience with this, please send it our way.

Cheers

Beaver Blogging: Tree Dudes

We're in Beaver, PA for the week, and since holiday stuff isn't yet in full swing, we went for a little hike around town today. We ran into a couple of cool tree carvings. Apparently a local guy with a chainsaw makes them. We don't know what effect they have on live trees, but they look cool.

They All Fall Down

The trees around here put on a lackluster display for most of the season. Some of the trees that usually look fantastic sort of just turned brown and crapped out a few weeks into October. In the past week, though, the holdouts have really been putting on a show.

The poplars (and check out that moon!)

A Japanese maple...

...and another

The holly

Yet another Japanese maple

TIMBERRRR!

The volunteer black walnut that has been a pest to our adopted apple tree and nearby tomatoes is no more. This afternoon Meg, Steveo, and I took the first step towards reclaiming the area around our garden. As renters, a consistent obstacle we have to address is clearing out the neglect of former tenants. We're not sour about it because we know that it is giving us the opportunity to learn what to do and not do when we buy our own property.

As I mentioned in the last post, we want to learn how to care for fruit trees. The lucky adoptee we chose had a black walnut that was entirely too close.



As you can see, the tree wasn't all that big, but even at this size, it commanded a good deal of space well beyond its branches. I'll talk about the bennefits of the black walnut's toxicity in a bit, but first there was some fun to be had with sharp objects.


Steve started chopping!




I was chopping!




Meg was chopping! It was anarchy!




Side note: Black Walnut + Tap Root = A whole lot of whacking


The whole project took about half an hour and already the apple tree looks much happier. Now don't get me wrong, black walnuts are not all bad. However, where this one was located was doing more harm than good. If you do have some black walnuts that aren't too close to your garden they are actually quite beneficial. Just this past weekend on "You Bet Your Garden," Mike McGrath said that a good mixture of their leaves can be an effective suppressive mulch that will keep bamboo or other running plants from spreading all over the place.