Wednesday, December 30, 2009

New year, new blog site






I am continuing this blog on another site. To visit it, click here.
As this is my last post on this site I will simply put a few photos of our snow storm that came in quite unexpectedly yesterday.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A modest beginning




This is a bunch of grapes, not very big, kinda mildewy, and picked too late. The important thing is that it is the very first bunch of grapes from 4 Pinot Noir grape plants that I planted late last spring.


In just a couple more years we can expect to get enough grapes from these 4 vines to make a reasonable amount of wine. Maybe a dozen or two dozen bottles. Which will be more then enough to supply the happy hour on Wednesday afternoon with wine made right here at Rose Villa.


The grape vines I inherited down in the gardens produced 3 or 4 boxes of concord grapes, a couple boxes of purple seedless table grapes and 3 boxes of wine grapes. The wine grapes were taken into the Health Center and were cleaned up, their stems taken off and are now sitting in several 5 gallon containers to ferment.


It's hard to see in this photo, but the wine grape vine is in the middle. There are 6 grape vines in the space where no more then 4 should be planted. The middle vines tend to get covered and smothered by their neighbors. I will be taking at least 2 of the vines out next year, now that I know which is which I'm thinking it will be one of the Concorde grape vines and the vine next to what we think is the "Merlot" wine grape. Not the best solution but one that should give the "Merlot" vine more room to produce good grapes.


The rest of the garden is just about all done for the season, just some secondary broccoli and some kale left.


I will be leaving the broccoli, kale and Swiss chard in for the winter just to see if they can make it through to spring. The beans I planted amongst the kale is not doing well at all, too cold and not enough light I think, I will take it out this week.


Other wise the next big news is the greenhouse in the patio of the health center. It is finally finished and the growing benches installed ready to go to work. It's just too bad it's mid November, there is not a lot of planting and growing to be done now, but I will try to get something going.
To the right of the greenhouse you can just see the snow peas planted in the red pot, there is some arugula in another pot that is also still doing well. There is not much activity in the patio area this time of year, but maybe If I get some flowers going in the greenhouse I can "invite" the people to come out.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Where has all the broccoli gone?

It's the middle of October and the rains have come right on time. And as usual here in the Pacific Northwest the weather has changed from summer to winter like walking from a room labeled warm, sunny summer into a room marked rainy, cold and windy.

I've pulled the leather jacket from the back of the closet and found my rain gear and wool cap so I'm all ready for the 'other' season we have here. We only have two seasons here, sunny warm and dry and cool, wet and cloudy. But enough about the weather, what about the gardens I've been working on so hard this season?
































Here's a couple of photos of the gardens at their height of the summer season. Just before the plants really started to produce. The list of what came out of the garden is just too long to put down here, I also neglected to weigh how much produce actually was produced so all I can say now is I took box after box of many different kinds of produce up to the residents produce market.



















This a resident run market here at Rose Villa that goes on every Tuesday morning. All the produce (and flowers and baked goods) are donated by the people who live here, and of course from my gardens. There are no prices, just what ever you feel it's worth. And the proceeds go directly into the "Foundation". Which is a resident run financial group set up to help people who live here who have run out of money. So it's really a people helping people kind of thing.

For me it was a real eye opener when I took a box of maybe twenty heads of broccoli up to the market and it was sold within 7 minutes. That's when I realized that the "Tuesday Market" is more then a money making kind of thing but it is a way to get fresh food to people who would not ordinarily have access to fresh nutritious produce.

















The lady that runs the produce market is in her mid 90's. And there are at least 2 other ladies that are helping her right now and are getting ready to take over when 'the boss' retires, if she ever does. Which means the produce market will go on next year and I'd better get planning for what to plant next year.

















These last two photos are how the gardens look now. I've added fresh compost from the composting bins and dug it in to 'season' over the winter. I might also dig in leaves when they start falling. The pathways are covered with chippings from a fir tree that was taken down this summer. I've got some late season broccoli still growing, also some beans, peas, kale, spinach, arugula and swiss chard. These are experimental crops to see how late in the season I can still harvest fresh vegg.

One final update, I just picked 4 boxes of concord grapes and took them up to the main kitchen to be made into grape jelly. To be sold at the fall bazaar and concert next month, the proceeds of which will go the the 'Foundation".

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Natures astonding fecundity


I started out writing this months edition of my gardening blog by taking a camera down to the vegetable gardens here at Rose Villa, thinking to brag a bit on the produce being produced by the gardeners. Instead I found myself noticing the weeds growing along the edges of the gardens, in empty plots and in the gardens themselves. Everything from a common dandelion to weeds that, much to my shame, I have no idea their names.
In many cases it's only when you start looking up close that the real beauty of these plants starts to present itself.
Sometimes it seems that we gardeners make a huge mistake when we classify plants into useful, profitable and 'good' plants and those that have no useful or profitable quality's, the 'bad' plants. The weeds.

I'm sure that most of us have heard what the definition of a weed is; a plant in the wrong place. But what appears to us as the wrong place is only a human definition. To a plant any place it can find to live, put down roots and reproduce is the right place.

What
beautiful picture a single dandelion makes when it's growing in a rock wall on the edge of a garden. As a gardener I could spend my entire life trying to get a 'flower' to grow in a rock wall and look as beautiful as this totally randomly placed 'weed'.

What is not apparent as I look at the photos I've included here are the number and variety of honey bees, wasps and bumble bees that were working the garden area. I was walking through knee high weeds with hundreds of flying insects buzzing around my legs. It was a minor miracle that I didn't get one or two of them up my shorts. But they all seemed to be more interested in collecting nectar from the flowers of any plant that happened to be in front of them.



In the picture of the corn tassels its' a bit hard to see, but there were dozens of bees in this little corn patch, all of them busily working over the tassels. I could get really close to all the flying insects before they took any notice at all that I was around.

In fact, if you look closely at the photo of the green leaves you will see that it was much more dangerous for the bees then for me. That's a common garden spider wrapping up a freshly caught bee that wondered into his web.

This seems to be turning into a photo op kind of blog today so I will end with a last few photos of beautiful plants that just happened to be in the wrong place so are considered weeds.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Water that plant




How much water do plants need?

Everyone knows that plants need to be watered, and indeed one of the most asked questions of a gardener is how much should my plants be watered? To answer this question you have to know why plants need water and how do they use the water. That’s what I’d like to talk about today.

Photosynthesis is the answer. Simply put; photosynthesis is the process that goes on within the leaves of plants that uses water plus carbon dioxide plus sunlight to create plant sugars that plants then use to produce growth. It was people like Jan van Helmont in the mid 1600’s and Nicolas-Theodore de Sussare in 1796 and many others who, through scientific experimentation proved that without water, sunlight and carbon dioxide plants would not grow. The exact chemical and physical processes are still being discovered as plant scientists today work down through the cellular and molecular levels into the atomic levels of plants.

How the water gets from your hose into and throughout the plant is another interesting question. The answer is xylem and phloem. Just under the bark or outer layer of the stem or trunk of a plant is the cambium layer of cells that is made up of phloem cells on the outside and xylem cells on the inside. This is where water from your hose, packed with nutrients from the soil, and after being absorbed by the roots flows up the xylem cells to the photosynthesis ‘factories’ in the leaves and then down through the phloem cells as sugar packed ‘sap’ to all the rest of the plant.

Carbon dioxide comes from the air, sunlight of course from the sun and water comes from either your hose or the clouds. We can’t really control how much carbon dioxide the plant gets and we can control sunlight only by providing shade for our plants, but we can control how much water our plants get, particularly in the summer time.












Here's two photos of tomatoes, they all were planted at the same time, but the ones on the right haven't been watered nearly as much as the ones on the left. Wilted and even burned leaves, lack of growth and vigor, much lighter green coloring are all signs of the plant not getting enough water. The drought affected plants are sacrificing leaves, branches and color to produce tomatoes in a desperate effort to reproduce themselves. And when the season is over the healthy well hydrated tomatoes on the right will have produced a much larger crop of fruit.

Think of it this way, plants that produce a lot of growth during the summer, like tomatoes, corn, other vegetables, annual flowers, and plants that have just been planted and haven’t had time to grow lots of roots will need lots of water, at least an inch or even more of water a week. But trees and well established shrubs which have huge root systems that can get to large amounts of water deep underground will not need nearly as much additional water from your hose. And the hotter and drier it is the more water those shallow rooted, newly planted shrubs, veggies, and flowers will need.
Here's a trick you can use to tell when your flowers and veggies need water; poke a hole in the ground near the plant with your finger, down past the first knuckel, if the ground is dry all the way down it's time to water. For shrubs that have been in the ground more then a year; if the lawn around the shrub is dry, water the shrub as you water the lawn. For major trees; dont worry about it, you couldn't get the water down deep enough to do any good anyway.

So here it is deep summer and those veggies and flowers and newly planted shrubs will need all the water you can give them, and the well established shrubs should be all right as long as the lawn around them is alright and those big established trees,with their huge and deep root systems can fend for themselves.
See you next time.
Sedgewick

Wednesday, July 1, 2009



I've heard it said that if the corn is knee high by the 4th of July it will be a good year, well, my corn is taller then I am so I guess it's going to be a great year. That's a second planting of corn in the beds on the left and some peas in the middle. The tall corn will be for our annual Luau in about 3 weeks. I'm hoping that I can get some ears of corn off the stalks before we have to use them around the pig when we put it in the ground to cook. It's already tasseling out now so we might just get some ears of fresh corn to put with the pig.


The tomato plants that were given to us by a local gardening club are not quite a forest. I may have planted them too close together! It will be tough to get in a harvest all the tomatoes, there are already zillions of small green tomatoes throughout the tomato forest. The only problem so far is that I suspect the "Supice" variety on this end of the bed may be slightly susceptible to leaf wilt diseases. That's verticilium and fusiarium blight to be exact. But so far "Supice" is only showing slight wilting, not bad so I will try to leave it till time to start harvesting tomatoes.

Some of the onions the kids planted back in April have become really big, and some have stayed small. All from the same bag so it must be something in the soil that is keeping the small ones from getting really huge. Just this week half a dozen of the smaller ones bolted and started to form flower heads so I pulled them. They are really flavorful and strong. The kids will be back next week for a summer gardening program and I cant wait to show them what happened to the onions they planted.


In moments that I wasn't planting and harvesting and watering and weeding the the veggie garden I was part of the Dragon Boat crew for the big Rose Festival Dragon Boat Races.
The photo on the left is one of our practices when it was pouring down rain, if it's not raining we aren't training I always say. I'm not sure if the rest of the team is sharing that sentiment. The reason I'm not on the boat is because I buggered my shoulder up a while back and had to stay on shore for a while.
We didn't win but we did have a great time, plus we are the only dragon boat team with their own cheerleaders. One of the most exciting times was when right at the start of the final race we got broadsided by the boat next to us, no serious injuries but it did take us out of the running for that race. That's racing.





I will stop now and leave you with a photo of a rose from our rose garden. This one is "Raven", a shrub rose. One of my favorites.





















Monday, May 25, 2009

Problems, problems, problems!

Well, not really problems so much as learning experiences. And I will tell you, it has taken quite a bit of courage to admit that after more then 35 years in the landscape maintenance business, and after believing I was really quite an impressive gardener and horticultural expert that I just don't know all that much about how to grow food.

Just because I know what an Acer palmatum dissectum Atropurpureum is, how to plant and care for it doesn't mean I know what is the best tomato to plant on this particular hillside just south of Milwaukie. Let me tell you, when I went to Fred Meyers garden center to pick up 14 tomato plants, one for each one of my kids gardening group, which seemed like such a simple thing to do, I ran head on into the cruel reality's of the tomato fanciers world. There must have been several dozen different varieties of tomatoes! How was a poor fumble fingered lamebrain like me to know the difference between 'Big Boy' and 'Willamette" tomatoes?

Well, I did manage to get 4 or 5 different varieties for my 14 kids. But then came time to plant the little things. Does anyone else know about the unofficial 'rule' about not planting tomatoes before Mothers Day? One of the kinder and sweeter of the other gardeners down in the gardens told me about this planting 'rule'; but for her I would have put the tender little tomato starts in a good two weeks early, and who knows what would have happened then? But I did get them in, even scrounged some tomato cages to put around them, but I am beginning to wonder if the patio variety tomato really needs that huge cage? Time will tell I suppose.

Oh, and need I say it? My tomatoes are some of the smallest in the entire garden area!

And then there are the potato plants. I managed to find some seed potatoes at one of the garden centers about a month ago, they were in a big bag and all of them were already sprouting out and looking really strange. But I handed them to several of the kids to plant one fine Wednesday, and away they went, digging holes sticking seed potatoes in. And yes I did insist that they plant them with the sprouting parts pointed up, although I'm pretty sure at least one of the kids didn't listen to that little piece of advice. And now I'm finding strange vacancies in several places in the potato rows and several suspiciously potato-y looking plants in rows where they aren't supposed to be any potatoes.

And of course one of the other gardeners here in the garden area planted his potatoes at least one or two weeks after we planted ours, and his are at least twice the size of ours! I have some serious potato envy.

But it hasn't been all troubles and tribulations. We harvested the radishes and arugula that the kids planted when then first started coming over and that was a big success. Each of the kids took home a handful of radishes and a handful of arugula. That was a really good day, we even got to take a huge amount of radish and arugula up to the main RV kitchen. What the kitchen boss, Brian was going to do with at least several hundred radishes is not my problem. Did anyone have any of that puff pastry thing stuffed with cheese and our home grown arugula? I tried several and they were wonderful. Thanks Brian.

And then one fine day I noticed that there was some rhubarb in the plot where my grapes are planted; will wonders never cease. I checked around and found out it was time to harvest the succulent stalks, so I did and left them with the kitchen boss Brian. I ran out the back door of the kitchen before he had time to do anything more then mumble something about rhubarb sauce. I'll have to check back with him later to see what he did with the rhubarb.

I picked and ate a strawberry from one of the plants down in the gardens this week, I'm not that fond of strawberries but somehow this one was extra good. More are coming up ripe every day, I can see now that one of my mistakes was not planting enough strawberry plants.They are coming ripe just about as fast as I can eat them, so there may not be many that make it up to the kitchen.

Speaking of strawberries; there are some strawberries in the Health Center patio area that are almost ready to be picked as well as the blueberries. The fig tree and the apricot tree are doing great as well as the herbs. If you happen to go out in the patio area however, stay away from the blue flowered ceanothus, it's really attracting bees right now.

IMPORTANT UPDATE;
We just recieved a donation of 108 tomato plants and various other pepper plants. We now have a grand total of 94 tomato plants planted down in the garden, I'll be putting 6 tomato plants into the health center patio area and I have 22 tomato plants left over. I've done the math on this and it's a bit scary; if each tomato plant produces 100 tomatos we could have aroung 9,400 tomatos this summer! We may be sneaking bags of tomatos onto neighbors front poarches at night just to get rid of them.

But that's enough of my problems

Happy gardening to you

Sedgewick

Tuesday, April 28, 2009


Has it really only been 3 weeks since my last posting? Just seems like a lot has been going on around here and I haven't had time to think about this blog. So where shall I start?


How about with the worm bins? I finally decided to move them down into the gardens. There is a space on the north side of one of the tool sheds that is just right for them, not sunny and hot, out of the way of the other gardeners and yet easy to get too when it's feeding time. I kinda miss having them in my office, but it's best that they go outdoors.














Next, have I mentioned anything about the espliered fruit trees that got planted in the English Meadow? Well they did get planted. Up against a cedar post and rail fence, which is where I espliered the trees. Three apples, three pears, a Plumcot and an Apricot. That was in March. I just went and looked at them and they all are blooming and starting to grow! Hurray, in just a couple of years we will be able to enjoy all kinds of fruit from these trees, I even labeled them so we will know what kind of fruit it is.

On to the Health Center patio area. Back when I planted strawberries into the market garden I also planted strawberries into two of the patio area beds. Along with 4 blue berry shrubs I took out of one of my market garden plots. And this last month I added a Necterine tree and a fig tree to the patio beds.
So the folks in the Health Center will have lots of fruit to eat right off the plant. While I was planting in the patio beds I happened to have 9 herbs left over from a talk I gave this month on container gardening, so I planted them into the patio area beds as well. There will be lots of things to eat and flavor food with this summer, and all of it right where the people who live in the health center can get at it.
Opps almost forgot about the 6 wine grape vines I just brought in and am about to plant in the South Patio area of the health center. So now in 4 or 5 years we can have homemade Pinot Noir wine in the Health Center from our very own grapes.


The big news I guess is down in the market garden where the planting of veggies just goes on and on. Onions, radishes, arugula, corn, lettuce, carrots have all been planted in the last several weeks and now the radishes, arugula and the onions are already up! but the most exciting thing is how all this got planted.










I’m working with some kids from the Oak Grove Grade School just down the street creating a gardening group. And I can tell you that at first the idea of being in the same room with 15 4th graders was a bit, well, terrifying. But they soon made me feel welcome and a part of the group; it’s amazing how many of the kids have ties to Rose Villa in some way. Parents work here or have worked here, grandparents lived here, and a few of the kids are already looking to get a job working here in a few years.

I've been over there 4 times now and the kids have been over here twice planting veggies. And a more serious bunch of planters I’ve never seen, some of those seeds are well and truly planted I can tell you.


Needless to say the worm bin was a big hit.


I kinda felt sorry for all those worms, the kids really got up close and personal with them. I suspect that several of them went home that day with worms in their pockets. I wonder what their parents thought of that?


On to the front circle where those three diseased and dying fir trees were taken out in January. Much has been going on there as well, The grounds crew has been very busy clearing the old plants out of the way, planting new pear trees around the enterance and getting ready to landscape the front circle.


The excavator took 100yds of old dirt out, plus several of the stumps of the old trees. Then we had several truck loads of good topsoil brought in, along with a load of boulders. Right now the sprnkler system has been installed, the water feature is being built and the pathways are just starting to get built.
















All this work is being done by our very own grounds crew. Who will I am sure be very glad when such a huge project is done and over with. This will have completely changed the way the front enterance looked. When it's done you will have to come by and take a look.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

A time for everything



‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…to be born, to die, to plant, to uproot, to kill, to heal, to tear down, to build, to weep, to laugh, to mourn, to dance, to scatter, to gather,, to embrace or not, to search, to give up, to keep, to throw away, to tear, to mend, to be silent, to speak, to love, to hate, to have war and a time for peace’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)


I don't often quote the bible, but as a gardener I have learned to let the seasons of the year dictate my activities in the landscapes where I live and work. I have learned this through many years of watching nature go through her cycles of the seasons. Paying attention to what happened each season and how what I did during one season affected the landscape in later seasons.














This first photo is of a forsythia that was trimmed down in winter. It was a slow time of year, a dry day perhaps and it would save some time later in the year when things got busier.

The second photo is of a forsythia that had been trimmed in the late spring of last year. These photos were taken the same day.



To trim a forsythia a month or two before it blooms, cutting off and throwing away the glorious show of flowers the plant took all year to grow is something that I do not understand. It just goes against everything that Ecclesiastes was saying in the bible quote I opened with, and while I am not a religious man in the formal sense I do believe Ecclesiastes spoke the truth.



Here's another couple of photos of two sward ferns that happen to be planted 30 feet apart. Again, the photos were taken the same day. The one that did not get trimmed has looked pretty good all winter while the one that got trimmed in December has looked like a brown hedge hog the last 4 months. While I have to admit that trimming the fern in early winter has saved some time, I have to ask; Was it really worth 4 months of looking like a hedge hog was squatting in front of the welcome mat?



















"There is a time for everything....." The incident of the forsythia and the fern are small, and perhaps insignificant and I am sure some would say the convenience of saving time far outweighed the waste of the flowers of the forsythia and the long winters ugliness of the fern. I'm just an old fashioned hopeless starry eyed dreamer; I believe as a gardener it is my job to bring the beauty, wonder and grandeur of nature to others.


The person who trimmed the forsthia and the fern above may have done their job as a landscape mantenance person but as a gardener they have failed.
















I will stop now with just a couple of photos of some of the trees here at Rose Villa. And during this spring time of year so filled with renewal and rebirth, please dont just maintain, be a gardener.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Wiggily worms


I have started down the wiggily, crawly gooey path of worm composting. Which means that in my office I have 3 worm bins sitting where I can keep an eye on them and check out every day just what is going on with my wiggily friends. The first couple of days they seemed to want to get out of the bins and wonder around the office, unfortunatly if I didn't see them in time that kind of activity meant a slow death as they dryed out. But I am pleased to say that they have settled down and accepted their new home. And I am learning just what worms like to eat and what they dont like. These guys are just not all that fond of potato peelings or carrot peelings, but toss some green stuff in to them like lettuce or bits of celery and they really get excited and proceed to make slimy goop out it.


And it seems they are really coffee hounds, sprinkle some used coffee grounds in to them and it dissappears in just two or three days. Which reminds me, I will have to get some sort of tray to set these bins on as they are starting to leak 'worm tea' out the bottom. Which is a really good thing as worm tea is an excellent fertilizer for a wide varitiey of plants. It is a living fertilizer that can not only provide the nutrients plants need directly, but also help make the soil itself into a living thing that is much more willing to give up its nutrients to plants.


And then of course there's the castings from the worms, which, to put it rather directly is the worm poop. This is really good stuff. As with worm tea it is a living compost full of all the good bacteria and microbes soil needs to grow plants.


One final word on worms, the bins in my office have been here over a month now and they are really starting to 'work'. I'm seeing worm castings start to accumulate and worm tea starting to seep out of the bottom and these bins have never smelled. I expected they would smell like the garbage can under the sink when it's been left too long on a summers day. But, nope, not a wiff of garbage, the only thing I can ever smell is a composty, dirt smell, which, being a gardener I dont mind at all.


I have been told that worm bins can go outside in all weathers, that in the winter when it gets really cold, like below freezing you just have to make sure the little beastys are kept from actually freezing. So then the bins should be up against the south side of a building, or, if it gets really cold the bins can be covered like you would a plant to keep it from suffering freeze damage. But I have to admit I have kept these 3 bins in my office because it was cold outside and I felt bad about shoving the worms outside so soon after I got them, but, now that the weather is warming up a bit I'm thinking I should find a spot outside for them to live.


Or, maybe I can find an empty apt to put them, nobody would mind them in an empty apt and there the tempurature would be even throughout the seasons. Or, maybe I'll just keep them in my office and fix up a leak proof tray under them. They aren't really doing any harm on the other side of the room, and it's not like they play loud music or have wild parties over there.


Stay tuned to see where the worms wind up.








Monday, February 23, 2009

Sunshine, chainsaws and Rot at Rose Villa



We've had absolutely wonderful weather the last few weeks here at Rose Villa. Sunshine, warm days with cool nights. Hopefully the last few mornings of frost, I have gotten real tired of scraping frost off my car windshield in the morning!

The garden plots I am getting ready for planting are finally ready for planting, just have to wait till time to start popping seeds into the beds. It took longer then I had figured to dig compost into the beds and create raised rows and put newspaper and straw on the pathways. It's called no-till vegetable gardening. Which at this point I find rather a humorous choice of words. Between spreading compost by shovel and wheelbarrow, digging it up into raised beds, putting down newspaper and straw and then wheelbarrowing and shoveling more compost onto the raised rows I've spent a good long time with a shovel in my hands. Here's before and after photos of the same bed, just a different angle.














But it's done now and the first thing I will be planting are the strawberry starts I got from a nursery down the valley about a week ago. I'm thinking I will need at least twice the starts as I first purchased which was 25, so that will give me a chance to get something different. I'm trying to get at least two whole rows of ever bearing strawberries going so we can have lots and lots of berries as time goes on.

Otherwise, I'm starting to hang out at seed displays at the local garden centers, it's amazing to me how many different kinds of beans, lettuce, corn and etc there are, how I am going to decided what to get and what to plant is still a guessing game. I'm leaning toward fast maturing veggies and veggies that can be companion planted together. Things like onions in with the strawberries, at least until the berries start to take over the row. Which shouldn't happen till next year.

Another project that is getting started is the cedar split rail fence going into the English Meadow. I will be planting and espaliering 9 fruit trees on this fence. I know that this year I cant expect a very large fruit crop, but by next year and the year after we should be able to harvest a goodly selection and quantity of apples, pears, and plums from this fence row.

The big news from Rose Villa however is what's been going on in the front entrance area. We have had three full sized Douglas Fir trees and a medium Blue Spruce tree in the front circle lawn area since before the Villa was built, back in 1959. The firs were between 3 and 4 feet in diameter at the base, unfortunately they have been battling a root rot disease for at least the last 10 years. After several treatments for this disease we came to the decision that the trees were not savable and needed to be cut down before they fell down. So after some rather spectacular work by the tree climbers who cut the trees down and several days of brutally hard







work by the grounds crew splitting the wood into firewood the trees are gone. Here's before and after photos of the front area from the side, I think it appropriate that it's raining in the after photo.
Only stumps and mounds of sawdust left now. And what stumps, they all showed signs of rot but this one was particularly spectacular. That's all punky wood in the center of the stump and it went at least 20 up the center of the tree.









So now we have around 10 cords of firewood curing down in an empty garage and the entire front entrance looking, well, pretty bare and unlovely. Now it's up to the Grounds boss to re landscape the front area and make it look good again. I'm thinking this will be a dramatic change from what's out there now and what was there before the trees came down. Something to look forward to for sure.