It's late March. The local nurseries have all reopened after their winter break and our favourite grocery store's front entrance is crowded with flowering bulbs, pansies, primula and a wide range of other plants deemed not too delicate for March's variable weather. I've been looking at the stony weedy dirt exposed around our house when the last of the snow melted in February for far too long and have to get started on something. Establishing a lawn seemed too big a job to begin the year with. But how about a few trees?
So, last week we went to nursery to get cedars to fill in the gaps between the bushes and trees on the west side of our property. I wanted to enhance our privacy and cleanup some of the haphazard messiness left over from the bush clearing and addition of fill at the edge of our property line.
I was thinking yellow or red cedar since cedar grows fairly quickly, is easy to prune if necessary and that's what grows wild all around here along with Alder, Hemlock, Douglas fir and Bigleaf Maple. And, hey, it's ecologically sound practice to plant your naturally occurring local flora, right?
At the nursery, I ask for yellow or red cedar and describe what we we want to do with them (not a formal hedge, fill in some gaps, etc., etc.) She shows me these. I hesitate, it looks like cedar but the label says Leyland Cypress. I ask about yellow and red cedar again. She says "Hard to find around here." I'm incredulous, after all just by looking up at the wild forest on the hills all around us I can probably see about one or two bazillion yellow and red cedars...maybe I should just go out into the wild and dig up a few of them.
But what do I know, this is the plant expert at the nursery who's showing me these trees. At $10.99 the price is a lot better than I expected to pay for trees this size and who am I to question the experienced and knowledgeable people at the nursery (although after several minutes of long silences and monosyllabic replies I start to wonder if she's got a hangover or something.)
After another silence and a sigh she finally works up some salesmanship.
"8.99 each if you buy more than 10."
The Big Guy is impatient. "Do you want them or not."
I feel pressured.
"They grow fast."
I don't like to shop under pressure since I tend to make decisions that seem imperfect when reviewed later.
"Deer don't like them."
That clinches the deal. I buy 15.
Two rainy days and one sunny day later, after many uncounted hours of hole-digging, dirt hauling, tree planting, soil shovelling and water carrying mostly done while scrambling up and down a 30 degree slope booby-trapped with thorny bushes, rocks large and small, trip-wire plant runners, muddy holes full of roots, half-decayed buried logs (red cedar), dead branches, and live branches I finally sit down at my PC and google Leyland cypress.
Now I am having second thoughts. How strong is a tree that grows a meter every year? How high is 20 meters anyway? 25 meters? Will the apparently shallow root systems be extensive enough to solidly hold 20-meter-plus trees loaded with snow on a windy day on a 30 degree slope? Will the neighbours like them when they're 20 meters tall and 5 meters wide? Will we?
It's too late, they're planted. I don't mention my misgivings to The Big Guy. We'll just have to live with them and try to keep up with the pruning.
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Posted by: Petter | 11/05/2009 at 05:28 PM