Since we moved in two years ago, I've been at constant battle with a tall, cantankerous old tree on the other side of the fence that overshadowed half of my garden with its huge, dense branches. It especially enjoyed dumping leaves, fluffy spores, berries and twigs into my garden. As a result, I've had to constantly sweep up the mess and pull baby tree seedlings out of the soil. And on one occasion a large branch crashed into the yard, destroying several of my potted plants. Luckily my little guy Vincent wasn't playing in the garden at the time. On top of all of this, the heavy tree branches were resting on power lines directly over our yard. I finally had had enough and after about a month and a half of pestering, persuaded the pre-school behind us (the tree's on their side) to trim the branches back to the edge of their yard. I don't know if the fact that Vincent goes to school there influenced their decision to agree to this but I'm sure it didn't hurt. Well, I got more than I bargained for - they cut down the entire tree. On a foggy morning last week, a guy with a chainsaw cut the tree down one huge branch at a time. I ran out in the garden last Sunday at 8am just in time to pull the potted plants out of the way as the branches came crashing into the yard and I had a few close calls with a few of the branches landing just a few inches away from me and the plants. Anyway, it was a huge mess and I ended up spending a good part of the day cleaning up, but I couldn't be happier now that it's gone.
Here's the tree massacre post-apocalypse view. The downed branches were
stacked nearly to the top of the fence. A huge mess.
Although I was able to save most of my plants since they were in pots, my treasured
fern tree was in the ground and I didn't have time to even tie it's fronds back so it
took a real beating. Note the ironic "welcome" sign.
Almost back to normal. Here's the view after I completed most of the cleanup
and returned the plants back to their original locations.
As you can see here, at least part of the fern tree survived the carnage. A few new
fronds are already coming up so it should be right as rain within a few months.
I'm also planning on growing bamboo against this wall to block the view of
the preschool playground equipment.
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