Planting Trees

During our first summer living in Waconia, we made a trip to a local nursery to get some advice on landscaping. In addition to setting us up with a nice array of shrubs, the salesman gave us a great piece of advice: "Don't expect an instant garden."

The temptation is to fill up a space with shrubs, flowers, and trees. However, plants grow. They will mature to full-size plants. People planting instant gardens plant young plants too close together looking for a certain aesthetic and the plants end up choking each other out as they mature.

Our lot is only a quarter-acre in size, so we have to heed his advice carefully. Plant too many trees and we end up living in a dark forest in ten years. Nice if your a squirrel, but not nice if you want to play ball, grow flowers, or be outside without hordes of mosquitoes.

Recently we purchased two more trees. This should be it. On our lot we now have eight- plenty for a suburban yard. Using my birthday money, we went to the same local nursery we started our landscaping adventures at and bought an "Autumn Blaze Maple" and a "Red Splendor Crab Apple."

I grew up taking trees for granted. They were everywhere and just seemed to grow on their own. In our neighborhood, the oldest trees were planted 5 or 6 years ago. These are nice trees. The fun is planting them and watching them grow. It will take a few years and there's a chance they might not survive, but it's satisfying to see them take root and change our view.

Green Grass- Finally!

Paul Douglas could have taped the same weather report for the first two months of summer. Every seven day forecast showed sun and highs in the 90s for the first 6 days with a tantalizing threat of an "isolated" showers on the seventh. Rarely did that happen, and when it did those people that received rain felt like they won the lottery.

August has been a different story. The Metro is .02 inches away from an August record and received more rain this month than the previous three months combined. The result is that our yard looks like Ireland. I'm expecting to see a flock of sheep grazing one morning when I go out for the newspaper.

When I got home from a half-day of work this afternoon, Jack and I went out to play ball. I went along the back fence and found a bog (or a fen?). I could hear water emptying into the storm drain and see water pooled among the rocks in out landscaping along the fence. Where was this water coming from? Did we spring a leak? Did the boys dig too deep in their sandbox and expose a secret artesian spring?

Turns out it was our neighbors. They emptied their pool and the water runs to our yard then through our rock garden to the drain. That should keep the grass green.