happy arbor day!

arbor day is not just for planting trees: it is also about caring for trees. so get outside and trim your loved ones...add some compost around their roots...give em a drink...show them you care.

artful leaves

the first article i read about these artful leaves said that each one was painstaking carved by hand...then i read another one that said they were done with a laser: i believe that one.

sweet sugar maple

another beautiful autumn weekend here in the mid-atlantic! we wont hit our peak colors until next weekend, but the sugar maples will have come and gone by then. sweet.

crab apple trees

when I was a kid in Berkeley, we had a crab apple tree in the front yard: my parents designed and built a deck around it, and it promptly died the next spring. in the interim, I tried making pies with the bitter fruit. the baked good looked pretty and tasted nasty! still, it started me thinking about cooking, and especially pies! I haven't tried reinventing my original crab apple pie recipe lately, but as fall descends upon us, I do notice how enticing the little fruits are: so cute! the birds seem to really go for them.

gnome crossing

a few weeks ago i wrote about the guerilla gardener who placed a little gnome in a tree nook, followed by coverage of his gnome-knapping...now, a village has arisen from the tears we cried for the missing mate. its a little cartoonish, but fun, nonetheless.

how do you tell the age of a tree?

i really do feel badly about having to cut the large red oak down...it was the last big tree in the yard. now that it is down, i wondered how old it was, how do you tell the age of a tree? tree rings! (thank god for the internet!) apparently, it is over 85 years old. wow! the house was built in 1901, the tree was apparently planted by a flapper! so cool!

gnome knapping

a few months ago i reported on the guerrilla gardener who placed the fantastic 'reading' gnome in a tree hollow. well, just like molly, somebody stole him. today i saw this sign face down.:(

red oak down

anyone need some fire wood? i hated to take this big tree down, but it was so scary every time a storm kicked up: it was too close to my house, leaned toward my neighbors house and dropped large branches every year. the econoclypse made the price right, most importantly: 9 grand was a little over the top! now the way is cleared for the addition: pressures on!

emerald ash borer alert

i have seen a number of billboards along the chesapeake bay watershed in both maryland and virginia asking people not to move firewood away from were it was felled so to not spread the ash borer beetle any further. the beetle itself does little damage but the larvae feast on the inside of ash trees and disrupt the flow of water and nutrients to the tree. 40 million ash trees have been killed so far, with a total of 7.5 billion threatened nationwide in the entire fraxinus genus! educate yourself and others: learn to identify the nasty ash nemesis and distinguish it from other similar-looking native (and good) bugs.