Bye-Bye, Dead Tree - Hello, Epic Garden

I have a suspicion that 2020 is going to be an epic gardening year.  There are two major factors.

Our first fire while enjoying the more expensive view. 

First, we’re home all the dang time these days, most notably on the weekends.  Second, the neighbors finally removed the half-rotten tree along our property line last week so now our garden can bask in the full glory of the sun.  

Of course, the neighbors didn’t cut the tree down to enhance the sun exposure of our garden.  That’s just a side benefit. 

Garlic plants and the greenhouse.

Now I am a tree hugger, keep in mind, but goodness me!  Am I delighted to see that particular tree go!

Before

If it had grown up in the forest I’d have happily watched nature take its course.  Dead wood is critical for birds, especially woodpeckers, and the tree’s waning nutrient is slowly returned to the earth and the ecological cycle goes round and round beautifully, as it should. 

After

But, this tree wasn’t in the forest.  It was in the neighbor’s yard right up against our shared property line, smack dab in the middle of town.

We could tolerate the shade just fine, but over the past three or four years, limbs thicker than my thigh started to fall with alarming regularity.  Last July we reached out to the neighbors about it becoming a hazard when a big honker crashed down right where I’d been standing 10-15 minutes previously, hanging clothes on the line. The main trunk was so rotten the sun shone through the middle.  The canopy was cluttered with limbs that had broken off and were just waiting to for gravity to finish with them.  It seemed like a matter of time before something landed on our garage or the neighbor’s house or the fence. Or Matt.  Or Ginger.

During

The tree needed to go.

And I’m glad it is gone, too, though there is also a little bittersweet there.  I feel bad for the birds that lived in the tree’s rotten and easily excavated limbs, even if most of the inhabitants were the almost universally unloved (and invasive) European Starling.  Our yard below, including the garden, feels astonishingly open, almost naked—it’s huge now—and it will also likely require more water.  We’ve definitely gotten a more expansive view of the Rims now.  That’s lovely.

The timing of the tree’s demise strikes me as a gift from the Universe.  We’d just run out of firewood for our backyard pit since we have a fire a couple nights a week lately.  We’re certainly well stocked again now.  “Everything you take is less work for us,” the tree folks told me.  It is all super dead and burns readily.  

The best part of the timing though was that, since I am working from home, I was able to watch basically the whole tree removal thing.  Golly!  What a thing to see, too!  Toward the end of the day I finally just took my work stuff out to the back step so I could work and watch at the same time.  It made more sense than making a trip to the window every few minutes.  I could feel the big chunks of the tree—THUMP—when they fell to the ground.  It was distracting.  Fascinatingly distracting.

Cliffnotes:  

• That arborist is an artist, not to mention an exceptionally strong human being with impeccable aim. 
• That tree probably took 65+ years to grow and eight hours to be undone. 
• Humans have so much power to alter the landscape. 
• People do the all sorts of the craziest things for a living.

I can’t wait to see what the peppers and eggplants do with all that extra sun this growing season.  I don’t care if we do have to water more frequently.  Pros and cons to all things.  I’d rather have the sun.  Last year we worked up a homespun drip irrigation system using the ditch water so maybe the timing is perfect here, too.

Pea vines are poking through the earth.  We can easily see the rows now from the kitchen.  Potatoes have been planted.  The shallots have sprouted and the garlic is nice and tall. Greens and herbs are up in the greenhouse.  They were joined last week by pepper, eggplant, and basil plants that we started under lights in the basement.  They’re loving it.  I’m loving fresh basil!

Peas

Usually late March or early April is when Matt and I start getting wanderlust and head for the hills…or desert or prairie or…wherever our heart calls us.  We especially like going to Yellowstone for the early season quiet.  It isn’t unheard of for us to spend every April and/or May weekend in the park.  That clearly wasn’t in the cards this year.  

Our governor’s shelter-in-place directive specifically had a clause permitting outdoor recreation (though it also encouraged essential travel only, which would often be at odds, if you ask me).  Even with the seal of approval on hiking and paddling and such though, all Forest Service campgrounds and cabins were off-limits (not to mention Yellowstone).  We had a cabin rental for early April that was cancelled, for example.  We booked it back in March when our DC-Shenandoah plans got quashed.  Our in-state alternative would also get nixed in due time however.  We talked about backpacking some weekend or other, but ultimately just decided to stick closer to home.  We made a day trip to watch birds.  We explored a new county park we heard about.  We go on a lot of bike rides. We’ve paddled around in our kayak at Riverfront Park.

And we hang out in the garden even more than before.

Looking in on the plants from one of the windows. We’re opening a few windows every morning and then close them up again each night to regulate the temperature. 

I can only assume that closer care will lead to a more beautiful and bountiful garden.  Sometimes the garden suffers for all our gallivanting.  This year we've been able to jive with what is best for the plant’s schedule, instead of working around our travels and whenever we have a “free” evening.  We’ve had all sorts of free evenings to work with this past month.  

I foresee less travel for us this year as a whole, but especially out of state—which is cool in its own way and certainly novel for us.  Of course, I might say differently in a month.  Who knows at this point?  

Can you see the letter I written in the embers if that log?

The first wave of our tie-dye gigs have been cancelled or postponed.  Ditto for our outdoor summer concert season.  We’ve temporarily stopped making “Big Plans.”  Matt says it is peculiar to not have a destination he’s researching for us, but he’s been spectacular at dreaming up Small Plans to enliven our days.  The kayak adventure, say, or the new park.  He was also able to once again reserve a forest service cabin, for later this month as part of my birthday. 

Strawberry plants along the main path in the garden.  I really like our brick walkway.  It’s made from salvaged brick. 

For the most part though, we’ll stay home and garden in the sunshine.