Weaving A Gem Of A Life

I have nothing but great things to say about Birchcrest landscaping. If you’re in the Rochester, NY area, I definitely recommend using them. Every crew that came was pleasant, professional, hard-working, and skilled at their respective jobs.

Here’s the front of my house, from across the street.

I do realize you can’t really see anything at this distance…but that’s sort of the point at the moment, what you don’t see. No big old yews in the front, no huge maple in the back.

Here’s a bad photo of the left side of the front steps.

From left to right you see a gold mound spirea, planted by Birchcrest, a deep red large-flowering hibiscus and a mum, planted by me. What you can’t see are some orange and pink hyacinths I also planted. There are also about 200 daffodil bulbs and some type of perennial geranium from the prior owner mixed in here.

A much better photo of the right side of the steps.

From the left is a mum and a pink large-flowering hibiscus that I planted, a Japanese maple Birchcrest planted, another of those hibiscus (me), and another gold mound spirea (Birchcrest). My next-door neighbor is going to give me some divisions from her garden that I’ll put in this space, too, and maybe along the side.

Along the west side of my house, Birchcrest extended my narrow house garden almost all the way down to the end of my fence.

They installed the stone border and planted 2 gold mound spirea and a pink-flowering crabtree. I planted a lungwort, 2 lenten roses, 2 small mums, 2 variegated leaf tall phlox, a really cute perennial geranium, 2 lavenders, and about 2 dozen tulips.

In the back corner of the fence is a small garden area.

Previously nothing but wild violets, aster, and a maple stump, Birchcrest planted a dwarf oakleaf hydrangea and I planted 4 lemon thymes.

Here’s a shot from the back corner of my yard.

Compare to the photos from a similar location taken before and after the tree removal posted on the 19th.

Here’s the backyard now.

After grinding the stump from that big old maple and removing the mess, Birchcrest brought in a lot of topsoil and planted a kousa dogwood and lots of grass. My front, back, and side yard looks soooo much better, at least to my eye. (I’m sure some people prefer the before photos.) In the spring I’ll plant some annuals to fill in both along the side and out front.

So now my task is every-other-day watering of each of the newly-planted areas. Like everything else that is simple, it takes more time and attention than is immediately obvious. Fortunately, the 75′ drip hose along the side doesn’t need to be moved till frost, and once I get the new sprinkler adjusted and installed for the grass & dogwood (my 2nd one; I’ve already returned the first sprinkler as not up to the job) that can stay in place, too. I’ll just have to change the hose from one of those to the other. Out front I have to water one side, then move the drip hose and water the other. I set a timer to let me know when to change watering places.

Needless to say, there’s been primarily gardening going on this week, along with lawn mowing; precious little weaving. Tomorrow’s another day, and my only gardening task is the watering. I’m looking forward to getting back to the loom.

When I bought my house I knew there were only a few big things that needed to be done. One was to remove a very large Norway maple from the back yard. I love trees, especially big, old trees. I’m a tree planter, not a tree cutter. But this Norway, although healthy enough, took my entire back yard, had to be trimmed almost annually to keep it off the roof of the house and garage and wires, and would be a REAL problem if damaged in a storm. Plus my ‘lawn’ was mostly roots and ruts. I knew I’d have to remove it as soon as possible or it would get emotionally more difficult to do so.

Here’s a shot of my house as of 1PM on Friday. You can see 3 yews in front and that maple out back.

The removal crew started work at about 1:15. They were amazing to watch. 4 men with a bunch of equipment working together like a well-oiled machine.

First, go up in the tree and hook up heavy duty straps. (The red arrow points to the man in the tree.)

Come down and make a cut with a beefy chain saw.

Then a huge crane picks that third of the tree up and lifts it over my fence to the middle of the road, where it’s quickly chewed up by a chipper.

Here’s the second cut.

And that section up in the air.

After a third cut and lift, all that’s left is the stump.

I was blown away by the fact that it took a grand total of 4 saw cuts to get that entire tree out of my yard. And by the fact that they CHIPPED IT ALL!

I actually found that chipping to be sad. I know my old neighbors would have loved to have that maple for firewood. But they couldn’t come up to get it, and even if they could, transporting firewood across county lines is (I think still) illegal due to the Emerald Ash Borer. But still….what a waste.

Here’s another indication of the size of this tree; the stump is about 24″ in diameter.

Anyway, after removing the tree in record time, they cut down & removed my big, old yews in about 5 minutes. Literally. I got a real kick out of the fact that they used one of those yews to sweep the street from leaf and branch debris.

The view of the front of my house looks different enough – no yews and no maple very visible over the roof.

But look how much different my backyard is!

The increased amount of light in my studio, and even in the rooms next to it (bathroom and office) is quite notable. From starting work to packing up their equipment took — are you ready — 90 minutes! Totally amazing!

Next step: crew #2 comes to grind out the stumps and put topsoil and grass seed in the backyard. Then the happiest part: crew #3 comes to do the planting. I took out 1 tree and 3 shrubs and will be planting 3 trees and 4 shrubs. Granted, nothing that’s going in will be as big as what I took out, but it will all be good – for my house, my brain, and the earth. Plus I’ll be getting new garden areas to plant with perennials and annuals in the spring.