Native plants...

[lydamorehouse]

 Thanks to the "help" of the power company, I'm going to be in need of some ideas for decently sized native shrubs to replace a tree they removed from our alley property.  Technically, the tree is on our property, but, technically, they have the right-of-way for power line clearing, so Shawn talked to the guy and said, "FFS, don't let it die slowly, just take it out, if you're doing your usual butchering job." (Only a little more diplomatically.) So, I guess we get free tree removal as part of the deal? 

I put in an email request to get on the docket as soon as Rainbow Tree Care is up and running again. They regularly trim our trees for us, so I'm just going to have them remove the stump and give us a consult on native planting we might be able to do back there. 

To be perfectly honest, it's always been a bit of a junk tree haven, so we might as well get purposeful since our hand has been played for us, as it were.

Is it just me, or is this Tuesday a little cursed?

A friend of mine in Canada tried to on-line order some stamps and discovered Canada Post's website was down for ordering. She then tried to get e-books from the library and discovered THAT website was also down. 

Can we all check-in? IS YOUR TUESDAY OKAY?

Comments

[minnehaha]

It's Taco Tuesday. What do you expect.

What do you want out of the alley planting? Privacy screening? Blooms? Fruit? Height? Dappled shade? Winter interest?

K.

[lydamorehouse]

We want a number of things, probably in this order: privacy screening, blooms and/or fruit for the wildlife, and it is probably fairly imperative that whatever we plant back there does not get much bigger than say 10 -15 feet. We do not want this "help" again.

Do you have ideas?

I'm trying to go more natural and bee-friendly for the yard, so if you have ideas that coincide with that, they would be much appreciated.

[minnehaha]

Of course I have ideas; I am nothing but ideas.

If you have the space, a well-planned shelter belt will give you all your dreams. If you want year-around privacy, arborvitae are the go-to. Yew can get big enough to give privacy but will grow slowly. I don't think these are natives, but honestly few evergreen options are native to The Big Woods. I cannot think of any. If seasonal privacy suffices, red twig dogwood can be gotten in a large, open form and gets perhaps 8 feet tall.

If you love small trees: the hawthorn, the pagoda dogwood, or the juneberry/serviceberry/saskatoon. Those last are genus Amelanchier. They produce edible fruit; the birds might leave you some. The berries are a bit like blueberries but smaller. I think airflow is important to these plants.

I don't know if you are growing in sun or shade, but I have grown all the common native shade-garden plants and some rare ones. Your bloodroot looks terrific.

Or, a raspberry thicket? um..... No honeysuckle....

K.

[lydamorehouse]

Serviceberries sound super interesting as an option, I will commence my research! I'm sure I'll come back to this post to periodically refresh my memories regarding your ideas.

Thank you so much!

[rachelmanija]

I only just woke up so...

Native plants are excellent! I look forward to hearing about what you pick.

[lydamorehouse]

Thanks. I was going to spend some time this afternoon looking through my native plants books. I have one that has a good listing for native shrubs and trees.

[naomikritzer]

My favorite shrub is lilac. Which is emphatically non-native, but I love the flowers.

[lydamorehouse]

And we have a number of those out front.

Though... it's not a bad idea. We could always use more.

[naomikritzer]

By the way, if you're friends on Facebook with Paula Fleming, she's a Master Gardener and would probably be happy to play shrub-matchmaker for you.

[lydamorehouse]

I will poke her! Thanks!

[dreamshark]

I've noticed a higher-than-normal incidence of professional websites inexplicably "down" - things that are usually pretty reliable like my bank or the place on the clinic site where you pay bills. Surely the IT staff that maintains these pages can work from home? Or have they locked down the data centers to the point where there is no way to reboot a server remotely?

My day has been just fine so far, but I haven't tried to accomplish much. There's still time.

[lydamorehouse]

Huh, maybe today is a bad internet day?? (And in St. Paul it's always a bad day for trees, they've been aggressively cutting them down all over the place for the last couple of years.)

I've gotten nothing done. I made a disappointing cinnamon swirl loaf with today's cast off of sourdough.

[pameladean]

MY TUESDAY IS NOT OKAY I CANNOT GET THE RIGHT UNSWEETENED SOY CREAMER FOR MY TEA AND I AM TIRED OF HAVING A WEIRD HOT VANILLA-FLAVORED CAFFEINATED BEVERAGE.

Ahem. I devolved to regular soy milk today, but it's too low-fat. I wonder if my tea bags actually have lost their flavor. I have not lost my sense of taste; I can taste the soy milk just fine. It's just wrong.

This is a really minor difficulty in the scheme of things, but I discovered when I was trying to alter my habits after the diabetes diagnosis that it is perilous to mess with the minor pleasures of my morning. I don't like getting up and if I have nothing small and nice to look forward to, then things go sideways.

Such websites as I have thus far visited are all up, at least, and a man from Minneapolis Parks and Recreation came by a little while ago in a large truck towing a small trailer with a water tank and bucket on it. He set up in the middle of the street and discombobulated the traffic for the sole purpose of watering a tiny new tree on the boulevard across the street. I applaud this entire endeavor.

P.

[lydamorehouse]

Saint Paul seems to be in the business of ripping out trees that were perfectly fine, so I, too, applaud your Minneapolitan parks and rec guy.

The thing that's going to break me is the general lack of espresso in my life, so I feel your creamer crisis very keenly. Best of luck.

[pameladean]

Ugh on the ripping out of perfectly fine trees. Minneapolis did a bunch of that, removing still-healthy ash trees on the grounds that they wouldn't be that way for long. It's heartbreaking.

I react with horror to your lack of espresso. I had to give up coffee some years ago, but I recall being much keener on it than on tea, much as I love tea, and feeling any change in routine more strongly. Good luck to you too.

P.

[dreamshark]

Minneapolis is weird about trees. Sure, they can be very nurturing with the little ones they just planted, but the city forestry department also has a history of planting trees that are highly inappropriate for the site and then seeming surprised when they die. See the debacle of the plantings on the refurbished Nicollet Mall, which got arborists and landscape architects flooding the Strib letter columns with fevered and angry email. The city tried multiple times to make Norway maples grow on our 40th St boulevard, which has a layer of crushed rock about 18" below the surface that makes it impossible for large trees to survive. Finally they gave up on replanting doomed maples and put in some small flowering plums that are doing fine. But it shouldn't have taken 3 tries to figure that out.

Currently they are engaged in a plan to remove every ash tree in Minneapolis, whether diseased or not, because they figure there is no hope against the emerald ash borer. I believe the plan is to take out 1/8 of the ash trees every year until they are all gone. To further this sledgehammer plan, they just took down the big ash tree by our garage. Although it was planted on our property, it belonged to the city. Because at some point decades ago when they were putting in boulevard trees they had a city forester who recognized that trees would not grow on that boulevard so they planted the south side trees on the homeowner side of the sidewalk.

I would normally be outraged about this, because I love trees and cringe every time someone cuts a big one down. But, I also think that ash trees are terrible, ugly boulevard trees. This particular one was not only asymmetrical and ungainly, it had been planted in an extremely awkward location and had a habit of dropping very large chunks of itself onto 40th St. And now that it's gone I can actually see the sky from the hanging swing in my backyard, which is kind of refreshing. But I still question the general policy.

[pameladean]

I think the policy is terrible, but I'm glad it has had some benefits in the case of your substitute boulevard ash tree.

There are streets in St. Paul lined with mature ash trees that are absolutely gorgeous, really majestic. But of course they were planted decades ago.

P.

[dreamshark]

Actually our ash tree had quite an impressive diameter, and it did look better after I had it trimmed (so it wouldn't drop a branch on my garage). But it was still an asymmetrical and awkward looking tree and I really never liked it. And now that we can see the inside of the stump it left, I'm not so sure it WAS healthy. The outer 3 inches of the trunk looks healthy, but the entire circle inside that is rotted out.

[cynthia1960]

Very slow Tuesday. We are shifting to being severe night owls, and unless Emma has an early meeting, the cats who sleep on the bed (two out of four) keep generating sleep rays. If I didn't need to go to the bathroom, I bet I'd sill be asleep.

[lydamorehouse]

This is happening for a lot of people. My teenage son was up until 3 am again last night and this is starting to be a regular thing. He doesn't like it, necessarily, plus he still has things he's required to do for school, but part of me is very: Why not? If that's your jam right now.

[cynthia1960]

Since we have always been more creatures of the night, I'm not overly worried. Emma sometimes beats herself up when she sleeps in late, but if her work is getting done, and she gets to her meetings, what the hell. Her new manager is in Perth, Australia, and everyone is remote.