Perhaps this screenshot of our old header will give you a hint as to what we tackled in this outdoor update (which is most likely number 7 of 582, since we like to tackle outdoor stuff in bite-sized stages so we don’t get too sore/overwhelmed or blow the budget)…
Yup, that’s the Camellia tree that we first mentioned back in March (you guys actually helped us identify it). It’s a beautiful tree, but we’ve always bemoaned the fact that it was growing just inches (maybe even just one inch?) from our foundation… which made us tres nervous about permanent damage if we allowed it to stay.
After showing it to a few plant expert friends of ours, they all recommended removing it asap so the root systems didn’t cause any issues. And we had to admit it was kinda like a bushy, overgrown sideburn on our home’s pretty little face anyway. You know, the tree equivalent to a mutton chop? Or maybe one of those weird extra long “feeler” eyebrow hairs? Whatever the face-hair analogy you prefer, it wasn’t good.
Unless you enjoy the whole tree-tickling-the-gutters look.
Long story short, we finally decided to serve Miss Camellia an eviction notice.
Our first instinct was of course to transplant it. We generally liked the look of it and figured there was no reason not to at least try to save this gal. So I got out my shovel and went to town on her for about 30 minutes. This is as far as I got:
It may look like progress, but certainly didn’t feel like it. The roots were so tight that it was hard to maneuver around them… and I was in constant fear of knocking out a brick or two from the house as I dug into the earth with some pretty serious force (we have very dense hard soil here). So after about another hour of digging (where we discovered just how close some of the roots and the foundation really were) and some thoughtful discussion, we knew what we had to do. We apologized, told her we had done our best and that it was just the wrong time and (more importantly) the wrong place… and I got the saw. It was sad, but it was necessary. And we made a promise to plant another camellia somewhere in the backyard in memory of our gutter-tickling friend.
When it came to the removal process, first I took off the big limbs and then I spent the bulk of my time sawing through the trunk right at ground level. About another 30 minutes later, I was left with this little stump that (after snapping this pic) would be low enough to bury with level dirt so it wouldn’t be seen. I contemplated further cutting it out, but was still waaay too nervous to upset the ground more around the foundation, so I decided just to leave it be and cover it up with dirt so everything was nice and level.
I generally don’t like cutting down perfectly healthy trees. At all. So this bummed me and Sherry out more than we should probably admit. But we consoled ourselves with the fact that we had already planted six new trees since moving in (remember these) and reminded ourselves that removing this one poorly placed camellia meant that we were making room for new better-fitting plantings in that spot, that would, among other things, not lean on our house or threaten our home’s foundation.
The replacement plantings will definitely be smaller and more low-profile. It’s our general theory that short stout houses like ours need lower, airier landscaping to help them look taller (aka: not so darned squat). Our last house was so weighed down with a a heavy row of azalea bushes when we moved in that it practically made the thing seem half as high (see how we remedied that in this old post). So taking out this taller-than-the-house tree helped us earn back some much needed visual height (thanks to the fact that a tiny tree no longer towered over our house, making it appear even shorter).
Though when I stepped back I realized that one very overgrown bush was undoing all of my hard work. Sheesh. You know you’re in trouble when a bush is taller than your house.
So I gave him a little haircut with the ol’ clippers.
Not amazing at all. But better. That whole swarm of bushes is something that we’d love to transplant in order to open things up as we go. We’re actually really looking forward to revamping our front yard because the house still feels very closed off to us. Pretty much the only thing not blocked by greenery is the carport, which (though it has grown on me) is not exactly the part of our home that I want to highlight (we still very much look forward to turning that into a proper garage down the line).
Maybe now that it has cooled off a bit we’ll finally gain some momentum outside. Heck, late last week was so beautiful that Sherry did some weeding in the driveway to keep me company (and Clara and Burger “helped” – which means they pranced/toddled around and played with sticks/leaves). And yes, I did just say that Sherry did some driveway weeding. As much as we love our double-wide paver driveway, the fact that we’re one of the few folks who have to weed our driveway doesn’t escape us (as opposed to all the blissfully weed-free paved ones out there).
See, the driveway is very long. And, thanks to the weed-friendly paver-ness of all those cracks, it’s proving to be pretty impossible to keep free of super annoying green sprouts. We’re not down with those chemical spray-on weed killers since we have a bean and a pup who play outside (they’re not supposed to be great for the planet either), but we’ve done our fair share of research when it comes to more natural weed killing alternatives like these:
- Pouring boiling water on them
- Using course driveway salt
- Implementing a mixture involving vinegar
Sadly after a bit more research (like calling the paver manufacturer directly) we’ve learned that using salt or vinegar on our pavers can permanently damage them (leading to erosion, cracking, etc). So we’ve only tried the first method (using gallons of scalding water from the stove repeatedly dumped over various sections of the driveway). The result? Cue the sad trombone sound effect. It didn’t do nada. Even after waiting a few days (holding out hope that it might take a while to burn down to the root or something) those weeds were still sitting there smiling up at us. Grr.
So we decided to give up on the boiling-pots-and-pots-of-water technique and resort to good old fashioned hand-pulling every so often. Which isn’t exactly every day (yup, we’re those neighbors with the weedy driveway). So if you ever come over, forgive us if the front of our driveway looks like this (here’s hoping it’s at least partially weeded, which seems to be our pattern). And maybe someday we’ll get around to using polymeric sand which is supposed to cut down on weeds…
Okay, now someone make me feel better about having to take out the camellia. Has anyone else has had to move/remove a tree or other planting that wasn’t working for them? And if you’ve ever had success moving a tree with dense tight roots right near the foundation, what are your tips? I just couldn’t keep digging away without crippling don’t-break-the-house anxiety. We’d also love any and all driveway weeding tips. Especially the all natural ones that might be more paver-friendly than salt and vinegar.
Alison says
Whenever my dad has had to cut down a tree (my parents backyard is entirely woods) he always cuts a grid into it and then pours salt over it. The cutting of the grid compromises the stump and allows the salt to seep into the wood. Once the stump is dead, he always has a much easier time removing it completely because it doesn’t give as much resistance.
Witty Wife says
Ooh, good tip!
Erica says
My husband had to extract a young oak tree from our yard last week. I was sad to see it go but it was threatening the foundation of not our garage, but our neighbors garage!
Question: I was wondering how you organize your tools, paint cans, etc. We’re accumulating quite the collection in our basement and it is *never* organized! Have you ever done a post on that? If not…can you?
YoungHouseLove says
We just keep all paint cans together (labeled by room on the sticker on the top) and all of our woodworking tools in one spot in the basement and all of our planting/gardening tools in another spot and all of our smaller tools inside in three drawers in our kitchen (mentioned here).
xo,
s
Alison says
Also, can we have a picture from the street with the removal of your “landscape acne” so to speak :)
YoungHouseLove says
Yeah, it’s raining today so we couldn’t take a wide one (which we only realized we needed a bit too late, haha). As soon as it clears up, we’d love to.
xo
s
Cara D says
We had to take out 8 trees when we moved into our house and we only have a little under 1/2 acre and still have lots of trees. We had 2 tall pine trees in our flower bed right next to the house! We also had a very pretty willow type tree right under the eves of the house. We wanted to get it transplanted but the nursery said it was too late because the base was already cracked trying to grow away from the house. We also had a weeping cherry planted right up against the house which we had transplanted but it didn’t make it. We took out 3 crabapples, a birch and a magnolia that was planted underneath a weeping willow. Plus we had to remove and move tons of plants and bushes to make everything look decent. Many of the plants weren’t even in the right location for their sun/shades needs. it was a mess but we finally have it under control. We gave away all the plants and bushes so I didn’t feel bad. Most of the trees couldn’t be saved and it was them or future problems for the house.
Jen says
Well, I have no link for you but I once searched online about how to dig out well-established shrubs and trees. The guy in the vid I found had what looked like a massive crowbar he used to pry up the roots. Made it look easy! That said, when it came to removing a massive mahonia bush that was too close to the house… we did exactly what you did. It didn’t come back. (I had no guilt about killing it, I’ll add. It was ugly and vicious!)
Jimmy Cooper says
Hands down the BEST natural weed killer is this stuff called BurnOut II. It’s main ingreient is clover oil, which should be fine for the pavers. It works wonders and doesn’t smell terrible. http://www.dirtworks.net/BurnOut-Organic-Herbicide.html
Jimmy :)
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks so much for the tip!
xo,
s
Reenie says
I’ve never understood why people plant trees or bushes too close to their house….they do grow people!! HA! I’m surprised John didn’t chop that big bush to the ground too.
Bethany Peterson says
We had to cut down a weeping willow tree at our previous house. It was really sad, but it was right under the power lines going into our home and too close to the patio. I really, really missed it but it was the right thing to do. That willow would have gotten way too big for our smallish yard.
Jessica says
i don’t know if this has been mentioned before or not, so if it has, sorry for the repeat! :) my grandparents had a looong paver driveway, similar to yours in color & pattern actually. my grandma used to take a big piece of black plastic & weight it down with a few extra bricks around the edges & lay it on a section of the driveway. she’d leave it there all day on a sunny summer day & the heat underneath would scorch the weeds. then she’d move it & do it again. granted, not the most beautiful solution, but it did work. just another idea. :) we are in the same situation as far as cutting down perfectly good trees goes, we have an ash(with the ash borer) & 3 HUGE cottonwoods(taking over the backyard with huge roots & popping up the patio) i hate to have them cut down, but i think we have to. so sad! the after on yours looks so much better though-so i’m encouraged! :) :)
YoungHouseLove says
I love this idea! I definitely want to give it a try!
xo,
s
Melanie says
Unfortunately we don’t have many trees on our property, we are in a newer neighbourhood. We did however have a birch tree in our backyard which we have started to remove. Somehow, we are not sure why but it decided to die and we were afraid that branches would fall on our fence or deck. It’s partly cut down now. I made my husband promise that we could plant another tree ASAP, because who could have a house without atleast one tree?
Suzanne says
Hi, I am a daily reader. Love the blog! I am not sure how to get rid of that nutsedge in the cracks, but I recently learned that you should UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES pull it. Because of the root structure, pulling it just promulgates more. I learned this the wrong way :(.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, I have just been yanking all the weeds up and they come back so I yank them again. Here’s hoping polymeric sand or some of the other methods that people are sharing work better!
xo,
s
Samantha says
Weed-aside has an ingredient called “potassium salts of fatty acids”. I don’t know if that counts as a salt?
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, I’m not sure either. Maybe we will have to sample a few things on a small area of the pavers that’s covered by monkey grass and just see how it goes?
xo,
s
Jennifer says
We had a nice little oak sprout up in our front flower bed so we decided to let it get a little bigger and transplant it to an open space int he front yard. Well time got away from us and it grew to be about 7 feet tall. I had the bright idea that I would easily dig it up and plant it in a hole. We borrowed a friends auger and put a 3 by 2 foot hole in the front yard, THEN I started my attempt at digging up the oak. Yep, tree grow roots for a reason…to anchor themselves (also for food and water but that beside my point). After a few hours of being gentle and tring to dig around the roots I got the pick ax and went to town on it. Then my husband got the Jeep with the winch and removed it for me. So we were down a tree and had a deep hole in the front yard. Note to self, fill deep holes in front yard before it decides to snow freakish amounts during the winter in the south.
As for the weedy driveway I am no help…knee pads and rubber coated gloves?? What about a weed flamer…thats looks kinda fun ;)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, you’re not the first one to mention fire!
xo,
s
Susan says
I don’t know if someone already mentioned this, but we always weed whacked our rock work to get those pesky grass and weed sprouts back down so that everything looked nice and groomed. Maybe that would help. Good luck!
Sabrina says
We had a 100ft tree fall into our yard after a freak tornado.That was about 6 months ago and it is still there. Growing massive weeds. I kind of like it though, very “I don’t care, wild english fairy garden” at least that is what I keep telling myself lol Tree removers wanted $2000 to take it out! Womp Womp………
YoungHouseLove says
Holy cow, that’s major money! Enjoy that wild english fairy garden! Haha.
xo,
s
Jenny @ Words On Wendhurst says
Try posting the tree on craigslist, people who burn wood for heat over the winter will often come and cut up and haul away your tree for free!
Kelly Jo says
Oh I feel your pain! We just had to cut down a pretty little tree because it was a) to close to the foundation and b) if it grew any bigger it would cause damage to our roof. So now we’re left with this nice gap where it used to be.
But luckily my birthday is this weekend and what is my present of choice? A skinny little evergreen to replace it of course! Nerd alert right here!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, I love it. Plants for birthday gifts = awesome.
xo,
s
Samantha says
Oh an P.S. BurnOut is “BurnOut Weed Killer” from St. Gabriel Labs. The original version-a mixture of vinegar and lemon juice-was very effective. “BurnOut II” (the sequel!) also contains clove oil in addition, which they say makes it even better.”
Not trying to burst your bubble but Hubs and I researched this same issue last and came up with these same products and same issues. Trying to save you some time.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the tip! Vinegar and lemon juice = bad news for the pavers!
xo,
s
sarah @ handbagsnpigtails says
We’ve lived in our (1860 built) home for 8 years now. We had this huge tree in our backyard which the neighbors were constantly telling us “we needed to remove.”(Because they didnt like it).
We finally decided to have it taken down a few weekends ago when a friend whos trained in cutting trees down offered to do it for free( see the post and the tree here: http://handbagsnpigtails.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-were-up-to-today-winner-announced.html) He did a wonderful job and told us once it was down that although it was still alive, it was rotting and if anything(high winds,etc…) had taken it down it would’ve fallen right on the back of our home! So we were glad to see it go.
Its amazing how much light you gain by taking a 55 ft. tree down! And our yard looks so much bigger now!
Witty Wife says
Sorry about your tree.
But I LOVE LOVE LOVE your new blog header. Nice work!!!
Elisa says
We had a huge noble fir in our backyard- planted when the house was built 38 years ago. It was looking ‘sick’ so we had an arborist come out and he told us it was dying, that noble firs only have a lifespan of 30-50 years anyway. We waited a while then contacted other arborists for bids to have it cut down. Found a guy, hired him, when he finished cutting down the tree he said, “Sad to see this one go. It was in great shape. Hope you guys didn’t take it down because you thought it was sick.” Grrrrr…..
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, that stinks!
xo,
s
dreas says
The hurricane last weekend took down a big part of what turned out to be an American Elm in our front yard–and which is growing just a couple of feet from our house. Two of the three arborists we’ve contacted have said to remove it because it’s too hazardous, while the third is willing to trim it (and then probably get paid double in a few years when we really do have to have it removed for encroaching on the foundation). Given the rarity of elms these days, and the fact we only have the one tree in our teeny rowhouse yard, it’s breaking my husband’s heart to think about cutting it down!
Tia says
It is so hard to lose a tree. We live in new construction that was built next to a provincial park. The builder was required to keep as many trees as possible, which for us is amazing; our little townhouse has over 30 in the yard! The only problem is that they are very tall and slender because they grew-up in a forest (where sunlight filled out their tops and didn’t allow low branches to grow). Now, with so much of the bush thinned out, they lack support. We lost one in a recent storm and are always worried one will fall on the house (thankfully most aren’t as big as the one that hit your neighbour).
Anyway, no advise… just enjoying an opportunity to talk trees.
Rachel Tatem says
Yea for getting stuff done. My husband and I just took care of a similar tree in our back yard
Christine says
My dad always removed the weeds between our pavers using a blowtorch. Quick and efficient without using poison.
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, so the flame didn’t burn the pavers like soot-covered stone firepits? That’s what I worried about. Interesting…
xo,
s
beekeebear says
Yes! We moved into our first house 3 months ago. We moved in Memorial Day weekend and there was what looked like some sort of dead vine grown in/around a privacy trellis wall attached to one side of our back deck. Turns out, not dead, just dormant. Thing POPPED back to life and it was a trumpet vine. Rather pretty, but… we’ve pruned it twice this summer and thing just kept growing and growing and growing. Up and onto the roof, into the eaves, hanging over 1/3 our deck. And the biggest problem? Thing attracts EVERY kind of stinging insect on the planet. So that meant 1/2 of our deck, unusable due to bee proximity. Finally a couple weeks ago, we’d had enough and decided to stage a coup to take our deck back. I was sad to kill the pretty flowering vine, but even gladder to have use of our whole lovely deck. We found a single vine of Virginia Creeper hiding within the trumpet vine, and we plan to plant more of that next year.
Jennifer says
We had a Crepe Myrtle mutton chop and four other really big bushes (that seemed to grow 5 extra feet every time I pruned them) eating the front of our house. We hate cutting down healthy trees, too, but the crepe myrtle was only a couple of inches from the house and HUGE. We took it out this summer and it is amazing! It’s like the house can breathe again (you know, if houses breathed). The stump kept trying to grow back and we tried very various methods of hacking it out (picture a man, his neighbor, a truck, chains, and an axe) and epic fail each time. We finally hired a guy with a stump grinder to get it out. We have to weed our driveway, too, and let me tell you – it is a perfect chore for the kids. Hang in there and Clara will be pulling those weeds in no time!
Jes says
I hope the tree doesn’t grow back! Is that 90% trick for all trees, if so, we must have mutants growing in our yard!
YoungHouseLove says
Some folks have commented with some awesome tips if our stump starts to spring back up! Feel free to scroll back for those. So smart!
xo,
s
patty says
Just curious, does your driveway get icy in the winter? Do you use salt or something else that’s more paver-friendly during the winter?
Also, completely random question: do you use a ‘back-up data’ system on-line to store all pics, music, videos, blog info?? Or do you use an external hard drive? Or perhaps both? I’m toying with the idea of ‘online storage’ and figured if you used it maybe you can recommend a site?
Thanks!!
YoungHouseLove says
Here in VA we’re lucky not to deal with much ice (we only get a few inches of a snow most years, and it usually melts within a few hours). So we never used driveway salt in our old house after 4.5 years there (and hope we don’t need it here either). As for the storage system for our stuff, we store blog pics on amazon.cloud (expensive but trustworthy) and back up our personal photos on flickr. Videos are backed up on youtube or vimeo.com and music is just put on our ipods and sometimes burned to a CD or two.
xo,
s
Andrea K says
We were also the neighbors with the “weedy driveway.” In order to fix this my husband powerwashed each individual crack in the the entire driveway to remove ALL of the weeds and ALL of the sand that was used to fill the cracks of the pavers. Once all of the cracks were clean, he went and filled it in with polymeric sand using the directions on the packaging. We have not had ANY weed issues since using the polymeric sand. I’m not sure how eco-friendly the sand is but it sure did the trick for us. Just a warning the power washing took him hours…probably about ten hours over the course of two days, and he was covered in sand afterwards (better him than me!). Filling in the cracks with the polymeric sand only took an hour or two. And we’ve also been told only to use the polymeric if your driveway is completely settled (which ours is about 3 years old so we figured it was OK).
(sorry for using the word “crack” over and over again in this reply, not sure what else to call them!)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, love it. Thanks for the tips!
xo,
s
Maura says
This has nothing to do with trees or driveways but it might make you feel better. Today in my 8am economics class, a mixture of my own morning grogginess and my professor’s poor handwriting on the whiteboard led me to read “buyer and seller interaction” as “burger and sherry interaction,” which just made me think of sherry and burger hanging out, maybe lounging on karl or taking a stroll around the neighborhood together, etc. Thanks for making my morning class a bit more enjoyable!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, hilarious.
xo,
s
Angela says
This comment is unrelated to this post but… every time I see your new header I feel bad for poor John. In the photo-strip Sherry looks gorgeous, as usual, but poor John looks, well, crazy. It makes me chuckle every time :)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, that’s hilarious because I think I look crazy in the first pic and John said I didn’t. Conversely, he takes any photobooth opportunity as an excuse to look crazy. Really, he aims for it. So he’ll be glad you think he captured it. Haha.
xo,
s
Carley says
Have you tried Calcium Chloride in the cracks? we use it in place of traditional salt in the winter mainly because it doesn’t do damage to the pavement. It helped in our last place with weeds between cracks in the sidewalk. Just a thought..
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks! Haven’t tried that yet!
xo,
s
Meg says
We can TOTALLY relate to tree removal sadness. This summer, we finally pulled the trigger and had the ancient partially-dead oak in front of our house taken down — its roots were growing into our foundation and did horrors to our driveway — even though it provided great shade, hours of entertainment to our cats (birds and squirrels galore) and was a favorite to many a neighbor. Even with the recent hurricane and several bad storms (we’re grateful it wasn’t there to wreak havoc on the house, or neighbors’ houses), we sigh at seeing a very changed neighborhood scene. We miss our tree!
Courtney says
We live in a short,squatty house as well and wanted plants that didn’t cover a huge portion of the house. After consulting a landscaper, we went with Florida Anise planted close to the foundation and smaller plants, like juniper and purple loropetalum planted in front of the anise. They are all super low maintenance and look great.
heather says
Have you tried grafting the tree at all? This link talks about grafting and specifically that Cleft Grafting works well for Camellia trees. You might be able to save it if you just cut this super recently. I’ve never grafted one myself, but I know it can be done with more than fruit trees. It’s worth a try potentially.
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/grafting.html
We’ve taken out ones that close with a chain ties to our front end loader – but I would be concerned as well when it comes to the brick and the foundation.
YoungHouseLove says
Hmm, that’s a good idea! Maybe we can give it a try. Although we hear they’re delicate trees (so often they don’t survive even when successfully dug out). Here’s hoping…
xo,
s
Mary says
I think that is more monkey grass, not ‘weeds’ in your driveway. Don’t know if that makes a difference as to techniques to use…That stuff will take over the world!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, it sure will! I think we have a nice mix of monkey grass and all sorts of other weeds and even small trees going on. Everything seems to make itself at home in our driveway. Haha.
xo,
s
Steph N says
I’ve had luck with using the boiling water in the paths around my vegetable garden, but it didn’t really work on my driveway, either. My theory is that it doesn’t soak into the cracks as quickly as in more open dirt, so it’s not as hot when it gets to the actual roots (and the heat is really what’s doing the work there).
Ashlene M says
Looks great, we did the outside yard work this weekend also! Getting ready to install the swing set for next summer!
Now you guys have to retake the front house picture :)
Melanie says
My mom’s method for getting rid of stumps is to hack at that root system with a hatchet to get some good grooves in there and fill ’em with sugar… which attracts ants who then munch on the sugar AND the stumps/root until it’s bits of nothing. Of course, you would have a ton of ants by your front door. -_- Oh, Mom.
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, I love that. Too funny!
xo,
s
Anne says
We had to remove a plum tree from our yard when I was little. Plum trees are so pretty with their purpleish trunk and limbs and pink flowers. But it was damaging the roof and porch.
Now if only our neighbors would get rid of the damn walnut tree that keeps pooping on my car! I hate that thing!
madi says
Looks good! If you want the stump to degrade quicker, you can drill some holes vertically down into it – just helps speed up the process, especially if you can cover the whole thing back up with soil.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the tip! We’re definitely planning to attack the stump a bit more thanks to all these awesome suggestions.
xo,
s
Funnelcloud Rachel says
We had to *gasp* chop down a dogwood AND a cherry tree after we moved into our house so we could put up a fence for our dogs. I felt terrible about it. But it was worth it to be able to let the dogs out in the yard and not have to leash walk them at 6:30 am!
We have that same annoying problem with the weeds growing in our path (gravel) and in the cracks of our patio (pavers). It’s impossible to keep up with the weeding. I did the vinegar/salt/dish soap combo this summer and it worked like a charm (though I didn’t think about the possibility that it could harm the pavers).
Rachei says
I think that it is great that you use natural solutions to weed removal. I have tried and tried and the weeds in my garden never die. I even dug them up to their roots and they came back. So I killed them the non natural way. They do not come back now:) lol!
Mary says
We didn’t have luck with the polymeric sand on our back patio pavers. It took a weekend of power washing (sooo gross–gunk flew everywhere, including onto the siding), filling, sweeping, spraying. And the weeds still came back. At first, it was those little weeds, then came a bit of moss (shade).
Definitely investigate all the polymeric sand(s) out there before starting. Maybe some are better than others?
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, thanks for the tip Mary! It seems like the bulk of the polymeric sand people have had luck for years (someone said no weeds for over six years!) so we’re holding out hope that it can help – we just might investigate certain types like you’ve said. Thanks for the tip!
xo,
s
Elizabeth says
We have lost so many trees in our old neighborhood to storms in the past couple of years, and I have many tree stories to tell — but will not. One tip: we had to take out a pretty big tree because it was diseased. It was right next to our deck, and instead of taking out the stump, we used it as a platform for a fountain — round black heavy plastic with a recirculating pump and frog on lily pad. We got it at a great water garden place south of Waynesboro.
Andrea in KS says
I hate to admit it, but I enjoy pulling weeds. There’s something therapeutic about it. Crazy, I know!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh my gosh are you my mom??!! She claims to love it too. Haha.
xo,
s
Lenore says
Depending on how long ago you cut the tree you could try rooting a clipping. It’s super easy, you could grow it inside for a year or two and then replant outside! It’s almost the same as saving the tree! If it’s been less than a week and you still have the tree or branches hanging around you should try (can’t hurt, right?) All you need is a little dish, some water and rooting compound.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the tip! I think we’ll try it. Nothing to lose, right?
xo,
s
Christine says
My parents had to cut down a tree this summer. It was dying from the inside out. Even so, I couldn’t watch, or hardly even listen, as the tree guys cut it down. It seriously got to me. After they were done, though, I could see how necessary it was—- the trunk was hollow and black on the inside, and eventually would have fallen. At our condo, we also have a tree growing almost as close as your camilla. It’s kinda gawky, but does have its own airy charm, and provides some nice privacy for the people above us. Even though I know it needs to go— the roots probably are already under the foundation— it still really hurts to think of it being cut down! I think of trees almost like very silent people.
Claire says
You can use a little blow torch on the weeds as well. Not sure how that would impact the pavers though…we had a neighbor that would just blow torch all of the weeds in her yard at night….pretty funny to watch but by gosh it worked! Of course, round up is quicker and easier! :)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, I bet that was hilarious to watch!
xo,
s
Susan says
Ha! Love the “feeler” eyebrown hair anaology…made me laugh! I have a couple of trees that really need to go bye-bye in my yard, too. I keep thinking I’ll move one day and the next person can do the unthinkable and cut them down. You def. did the right thing. I read in a gardening book…after planting a camellia in front of my home, that Camellias are not good foundation plants…they get way too big. So you just corrected something that really shouldn’t have been there. Looking forward to seeing what you do along the front.
Susan (Between Naps on the Porch)