Learning about Trees

One good thing about staying home is that I've had the opportunity to really look at the plant material growing behind our house. Because we only moved here the end of October, this is our first spring in North Carolina. Our property is on Mountain Island Lake, one of the bodies of water created by Duke Energy when they built dams on the Catawba River, in this case in 1924. Duke owns a 100' setback on the lake, and so the hillsides down to the water are very natural and dotted with native plants and trees.

It was exciting to recently see that we have many white dogwood trees scattered along the back. (The state flower is the dogwood.) But there are also some other white flowering trees as well. The flowers on the trees sort of look like white colored bluebells, and we have never seen anything like them. In doing an online search, we discovered that they are Mountain Silverbells. Sometimes they are referred to as Silverbell Trees, and they grow in Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. Silverbells also grow as a shrub, and we have plenty of them on the hillside as well. It makes for a beautiful display right now.

Mountain Silverbells

As we stay hunkered in at home due to COVID-19, it will be exciting to see what else springs up in our yard and neighborhood.

Fall is All Around

Though we had a lot of rain this spring, the summer was fairly dry in my area so I wasn't sure what the fall colors would be like. Holy cow, over a couple of days last weekend things exploded! It's like an artist sat down with a paintbrush and cut loose. Our maple tree out front changed dramatically from Friday to Sunday.

On Wednesday I took off to try to capture some of the glorious colors around me. I'm so thankful that I follow other photographers on social media as I learn where all the cool stuff is taking place. My first stop was to the Missouri Botanical Garden. I had just been there a couple weeks before, and not much color was showing. This visit was totally different, and fall color was abundant.

Missouri Botanical Garden

After the garden I drove to nearby Forest Park. The colors in the park were outstanding as well. Since it was not too crowded, I drove to some areas of the park that I had never been to before. It was just lovely, and as an added bonus I hit my 10,000 steps before even leaving the park. Now that's my kind of exercise!

Forest Park

Buckeye Blues

buckeye tree

This morning we had a sense of deja vu. A little before 6:00 a.m. a crashing noise woke us up, eerily similar to Good Friday of this year. St. Louis has been inundated with rain for over a week, and we are in the backlash of Tropical Storm Bill right now. Today's victim was our old buckeye tree (aka horse chestnut). This tree was designated a Webster Groves Tree of Distinction several years ago as it is somewhat unique to this area, and because of its beautiful shape.

The buckeye tree is the one we were most concerned about when our neighbor began construction last year to cut in a new circular drive very near it. These old trees cannot handle the stress of having their roots cut. Additionally, he built a new porch this year, which brought heavy equipment onto the site. Both trees that have fallen this year were near the construction zone. Unfortunately, just like last time, the tree landed on a neighbor's car. Normally they don't park their car in that spot on the street, but as luck would have it, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time this morning.

Because of the size of the buckeye, the bed under it was all planted with shade-loving perennials. I am not sure how many were destroyed, but the remaining ones will need to be relocated quickly. If the rain ever stops.

The silver lining in all this, I guess, is that the police responded quickly to close the street. They also called the public works department, and the men removed what is blocking the street. Since that is most of the tree, that will be a huge cost savings for us. No power lines were pulled down, but a couple of neighbors are without their phone/Internet service right now.

It is never easy to lose a big, shade-providing tree in your yard. But this one was especially painful to see tumble.

buckeye blooming in May, 2015

 

"The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more."

   - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Timber!

tree damage

The St. Louis area had some thunderstorms with high winds and heavy rain on Thursday and into Friday morning. The lightning flashes and thunder crashes kept me awake well into the early morning hours on Friday. Around 6:45 a.m. I heard a different kind of crash. One I had heard only one time before when one of our 100+ year old post oaks tumbled to the ground. Only in that case, it was the middle of a calm, sunny day when the tree dropped. Fortunately the only damage it did was to our planting bed. This time we were not so lucky. Our 100+ year old white oak fell this time, landing squarely on the Pathfinder owned by our next door neighbor.

Recently the neighbor added a small circular drive to his front yard so that his daughter could park her car there. On our side of the street we have a private alley that runs behind the houses, and most of us park our cars in the garages or parking spots out back. Same neighbor has also been building a new front porch on his house, and that fortunately was spared any damage from the falling tree. As both the neighbor and Jim dealt with insurance companies, I went out front to take some pictures. Yikes! We were so lucky that the daughter was not at that time getting into her car to go to school. She could have been seriously injured. She was off for Good Friday, so that was a blessing.

Both insurance companies said that the tree removal would not be covered as it is considered an act of God. Their policy will cover the car, less their deductible. But essentially, Missouri law states that you are only responsible for whatever part of the tree is on your property. That means at any point in time a neighbor can trim off any limbs of your tree that is hanging over their property line. Most people do not realize this. And in this case, that meant we only needed to clear the tree stump and probably four or five feet of trunk off our land. The rest of the large tree is their responsibility. Including all the limbs our tree sheared off of their beautiful maple. It doesn't seem fair for sure, but that is the law. We will definitely work out some sort of compromise.

Jim called two tree companies to come and give us bids for removing everything, and the neighbor lady and I talked to both of the estimators when they came out. Both showed up at nearly the same time, which was awkward to say the least. In the meantime another neighbor came by with a third name for us to call. In the end, the third company gave us the best bid, and they are here today cleaning everything up. They first freed the car from the large limbs so it could be taken off for an estimate. I hope it is not totaled, as no one wins in that deal.

It was not a very Good Friday around here.

Oh What a (Stormy) Night!

St. Louis storm damage

Last night was the monthly board meeting of the St. Louis Publishers Association, which is held at the St. Louis Bread Company in the Galleria. Just as I was getting ready to head out the door, the winds whipped up, the rain began to pour sideways, and the hail came down. No way was I going to take my new baby, much less myself, out in that storm. As I waited for the storm to moderate, lightning struck, the lights dimmed, and a crackling noise indicated the end of telephone service. Jim was still at work, so the lack of a land line was not a big deal.

When I returned home from the meeting I went outside with an umbrella to take the recycling bin out to the front curb for the Wednesday morning pickup. I noticed a lot of debris in the yard, but that was nothing compared to what I saw when I reached the parkway. I use the word "saw" loosely as it was pitch black outside by then. I hurried back to the house to get a flashlight, and the next door neighbors stepped out to let me know that our downed tree branches had taken out their phone, Internet and cable. Sure enough there were a lot of limbs down, some of which were hanging out in the street. I moved them back onto our parkway and sidewalk the best that I could while juggling an umbrella and a flashlight.

When I got back into the house I fully expected that we would not have any of our AT&T services either. But our line was not affected at all. This morning I could more fully assess the damage. The tree is a 100+ year old Horse Chestnut (aka Buckeye) that won an award from the city of Webster Groves a few years ago because it is such a beautiful tree. Fortunately it does have a lot of branches, so you really can't tell where the limbs fell off. At least I couldn't tell today - once all the leaves are off that may be different.

The beauty of Webster Groves, besides the houses, is the abundance of stately, mature trees in the community. But many of them are nearing the end of their life spans. I can only hope that homeowners are planting replacement trees before it is too late.

storm damage to the Buckeye