When I was both my daughter and son's age (14-22), our yard, such as it was, was bursting at the seams with all kinds of trees. In the front yard, you had a fantastic healthy version of this:
In the side yard, you had a very nice birch tree and a small grove of pine trees along the side of the road. In the backyard you had a couple of crab apple trees, over a half dozen other trees (maple & oak I think) peppering the boundaries, and a medium sized grapevine (about twelve to fifteen feet in length) along the divide between our house and the next door neighbor.
For all intents and purposes, it was a very cool yard to play in (mammoth sized croquet game that started in the front yard and finished somewhere in the side yard); jarts (way before people started bitching about how dangerous they were); badminton and frisbee.
However, over the proceeding decades, that front, side and backyard underwent a radical transformation. While nothing was really touched in the front, save for a removal of some shrubs, the side yard took a major hit. The first to go was the birch. This went because the town decreed that if we wanted to store an extra vehicle (RV I believe), we had to widen our driveway (for those of you who have dealt with TPZ, you know what I'm talking about).
The next to go were the pine trees. They went because they gradually got infected with some kind of disease, and thus became a danger to everyone. On the upside, it allowed this grove of tiger lilies to take root.
From the backyard, one crab apple tree got transplanted to the side, which the other was too sickly to make it out alive. The one transplanted survived the brutal snowstorms from a couple of years ago (got severely uprooted) and is chugging along quite nicely.
As for the other trees, the two closest to the house went bye-bye a few years apart. Which was due to the fact they WERE DEAD JIM! and thus a bonafide major league disaster waiting to happen. Once they were chopped, sliced, diced and grounded to cumin (at least one of them was, the other looks like a refugee from a B movie), it became a much more open, and slightly drab, backyard.
Finally, another tree that was overlaying the deck got severely pruned, so that the nuts and what not not would stop clogging the gutters, thus creating water damage to the roof.
So overall, our backyard went from a proverbial this:
To a proverbial this:
Thus concludes our nature walk down memory lane for a Monday. Tune in next time when I write a post that will absolutely no pictures to distract you from the droll and drab post.
But for those of you who might need that blast from summer past to get you hopping for Monday, I leave you with this:
(c) 2015 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.
When I was growing up we had an entire woods on two sides of the house, just outside the house. Spent a lot of time there.
ReplyDeleteI spent a lot of time in Cedar Mountain when I was boy myself, but didn't really learn to appreciate it until I was an adult. Same goes for my backyard as well.
DeleteMust be sad to see such a transformation. We moved around too much when I was a kid to see such changes.
ReplyDeleteTo a medium-sized degree, yes it has been. The memories of our youth often color our perception of today. And that's not necessarily a good thing either.
DeleteTrees have a life cycle too, some of them surprisingly short. We think trees live forever but they don't.
ReplyDeleteThis so very true. But we do have a few that lasted at least 5 decades there, and I'm hoping that they'll a few more.
DeleteI loved the tree that was in my childhood backyard. However, the next door neighbour complained so often and so loudly that it was shading his tomato plants that my parents had it pruned, chopped, and cut back until the poor thing died. I think he should have just moved his damn tomato plants.
ReplyDeleteI agree, he should've moved them there plants elsewhere in the yard.
DeleteThat must be interesting to have so many memories in the same place.
ReplyDeleteYes it is.
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