A freak storm blew thru last Thursday night - many of you got pieces of it, too. Sadly, it took down our beloved plum tree.
It was the first tree that we planted and had flourished for 16 years - even providing plums last year. It had survived both Isabel and Gaston and a derecho last year, but something was different this time and over it tumbled.
Our "tree man" has complained about it for years - he thought it was too close to the house (12 feet) and is sure that it had weak roots on that side and that's why it fell. We thought it was a perfectly wonderful source of shade for the deck and loved the look of the red leaves against the yellow house. Guess i need to find a good picture to frame and let it be a good memory.
No matter what we do in the future, we have to get the roots out before we can do anything. We may end up calling someone with a "stump eater" to just grind it up, but first we are trying to do it ourselves. The tree man thought he was being helpful when he pushed the stump back into the ground and raked the dirt back around it - or, maybe that's just the professional way for him to clean up a job. We would have preferred that he leave it alone, since we have had to dig out the dirt again to get to the roots.
Normally, i spend about an hour each morning hoeing out dirt from the roots, and then Mitchell comes back later and cuts off as much as he can. As you can see ... we have a long way to go.
But it's also an opportunity. This has always been a shady place, but if we take the tree man's advice and not replace the tree, it opens up the space for another shrub and perennial border. I think i need to go thru my class notes and look for shrubs and plants with long bloom seasons and fragrance - and things that we don't yet have somewhere else.
If you don't have shade, at least you should have fragrance. Don't you think?
