31 bags of leaves...or...tasting my trees

Google image of our lot. House has the star.
You can see the tree line to the north.

One of the things that attracted us to the house that became our home was the triple lot. Our house sits on the far right or south end of the lot, with the 2 car, 2 story garage in the back. To the north, we own two more lots. On the other side of that, is a small city park. So, we have a large side yard next to a park which gives a beautiful open feel, unusual in a city that typically has about 10 - 20 feet between the homes. All this land comes at a price, and I don't mean taxes which are actually reasonable. The price is in maintenance, especially the initial work that needs to be done after years of little or none. One of the first things we did, within days of closing, was to remove the massive bushes in front of the porch and remove the vines from the house (documented here).  Other initial maintenance was started in the Fall included removing weeds and small bushes from the old flower beds next to the house. Weather, and more pressing work inside suspended the outside work until last week when Cindy and I decided to get at the outside mess again.

Cindy at work with her new rake.

31 bags of leaves

Branches at the curb.

We had just one leaf rake so after breakfast I brought Cindy to Home Depot and bought her a smaller sized metal rake. She was thrilled. Really. After a bit more shopping we headed home and began our attack on the lawn. For no other reason than it was the section that needed the most work, we went after the "North Forty" along the fence that separates us from the park. Medium to large maples, ash, and cherry trees line the fence and had been dropping leaves for years. I quickly raked the area in front of the house and along the utility strip between the sidewalk and the street. When I joined Cindy along the fence line, she had made little progress against the layers of leaves. Working together, we raked and piled leaves. I occasionally stopped to remove low hanging branches which were low enough to make me duck. When we were all done, several hours later, we had 31 large bags of leaves at the curb, along with a significant pile of branches. We were bushed (ha ha) so instead of a nice dinner on the grill we ordered pizza and crashed on the couch.

Cindy trying out her latest gift, 

The city took the leaves Monday but the branches and sticks needed to be bundled and would have to wait. So this past weekend I went after the branches and sticks. I pulled some of the larger ones for firewood and kindling but cut and bundled the rest with a hand pruning saw (I desperately need a chain saw) and dragged them to the curb. While I did this, Cindy cleaned up the rest of the old flower beds around the house and swept up the sidewalks and driveway with her new broom. The broom was her gift this week from her hopelessly romantic husband. I sure know how to treat a girl right.

We have a very interesting neighborhood filled with interesting neighbors. Once again, we attracted plenty of attention as we worked in our yard. Several of our neighbors stopped to tell us how nice the place looks, and how hard we are working. A small crowd gathered last weekend as we neared the end of our day discussing our progress and giving insight on the history of the property. One neighbor has lived across the street for over 50 years and said that the lot has always been empty, ending my speculation of a recent fire. Another neighbor remembered that the lot used to contain long, brick lined flower gardens. This explains the brick in various sections of the yard. This also brings us to tree tasting.

This same neighbor (a retired state forester) complimented my trimming work on the trees explaining how the trees healed themselves. He also pointed to the various trees saying what type they were (mostly maples) and whether they were desirable. Sugar maple = good, Norway maple  = bad. Then he got to a tree that he identified as an ash. I thought it was a cherry. This prompted him to break off a small branch and stick it in his mouth. This apparently yielded no result, so he grabbed another. And another. He then announced that he had a cold and was having trouble tasting the sap. Apparently, cherry tree sap tastes like cherries. The tree remains unidentified.