Omaha Tree Planting December 2014

Our tradition continues with tree plantings the Saturday prior to Christmas.  This year we planned early to replace three Accolade Elms on the Omaha Parkway with three Oregon Oaks.

Because we have had so much wind and tree damage this fall due to some wild high wind weather and even a snowstorm (of sorts) there were no city crews available to take out the dead or diseased trees with their big machinery.  So, Karl Dawson and his helper Elizabeth (the current Americorp volunteer) worked like heck the day before the planting to grub out two of the entrenched accolade elms, one of which was over 10 years planted.  The third one they saved for us, and you can watch our struggle here.  We learned how to use a mattock

and a pulaski

to manhandle this tree out of the ground.  It took these guys quite some time to finally corkscrew it out of the ground.  I stood around mostly and cheered from the sidelines, every now and then striking a blow with a shovel or pushing on the trunk to try to encourage it to release itself out of the ground.

Did I mention it was raining very hard during this whole adventure?  It rained, it was cold, we were soaked, and we had a great time.  Thanks City of Portland for the tent and the coffee!  It's a great Christmas tradition to plant trees days before Christmas, even if we are now replacing some of the very same trees we planted just a few years ago.  I don't know what is wrong with these accolade elms, but there seems to be a very high failure rate for these trees.  Hopefully the oaks we are replacing them with do much better.  Thanks to the Kuenzi Turf & Nursery in Salem for these great looking oak trees.  They are much admired by the neighbors.

New Front Yard

Forest Landscape Services out of Cornelius landed on my front lawn Thursday morning bright and early with a crew that ranged from 2-to about 6 at one point to completely deconstruct my front lawn and reconstruct it. I don't have a very good before picture because I hated our front yard and therefore only took pictures in the dark and/or snow of it, like here:

The major offenses:  weeds, lots of them; moss covering not lawn anymore but some sort of noxious weed.  We had a crumbly, splintery deck to the left of the chimney for the first 15 years we owned the house.  Early on, David would set up his hammock there and gaze at the sky until he realized that it was absolutely unsafe.  Finally, we ripped it out last Fall when we had a new fence built between our house and the neighbor to the north.

But now, after the professional team had its way with our front yard, I can take a picture of it in its entirety:

The front yard complements our house and even makes it look much bigger than its actual teeny footprint. There is a curvy brick path to the back gate so that David can easily wheel our garbage/recycling/compost to the street every Wednesday evening, and then back again Thursday afternoon.  There's real grass - a broad leafed grass that does not need as frequent watering as the other varieties.  We left all the upstart ferns in the landscape, which I thought I did not like and wanted gone in this re-boot of our landscape, but which look really nice next to everything else now.  (I hate to say that David was right about the ferns, but....)  

 It's really nice to come home to.....

Off-Leash Dogs

In the last 30 days, Molly and I have been attacked by two off-leash dogs while walking on the sidewalk on Omaha Avenue.

The latest one, this morning, was very scary.  A German Shepherd mix came at us full speed across a lane of traffic with her hair standing up and her teeth bared.  I had to physically get between the German Shepherd and my terrier.  I grabbed the other dog's collar, risking her biting me, to keep her from biting Molly.

In both instances, we are on the sidewalk, and the dogs are in the park in the middle of the street and run across a lane of traffic to attack us.  Both times the owners were younger women.  I asked them both to leash their dogs but was met with resistance from them both.

Here's the law in the City of Portland and there are leash laws for Multnomah County as well.  Generally, you can't have dogs off-leash anywhere except in off leash dog parks in North Portland:

• Arbor Lodge Park (N. Bryant & Delaware Street)
• Cathedral Park (N. Edison Street & Pittsburg Avenue)
• Overlook Park (N. Fremont & Interstate Avenue)
• Portland International Raceway (1940 N Victory Blvd.)

Guess what?  Omaha is not on this list.

Tree Holocaust

The City of Portland evidently sanctioned a tree holocaust on the corner of Omaha and Jessup.  If you haven't seen the destruction, wander down and prepare to get sick.  They took down all of the trees on the lot - including four magnificent sequoia trees - the likes of which we will never see again in our lifetimes.

Woe unto the City of Portland and this builder.  I can't even bring myself to take a picture of the violence done to this lot.  The City of Portland is preparing for density (and making short-term one-time big money off of it as well) and our neighborhood and nature is all the less livable because of it.  I don't even want to think about how many displaced birds and critters there are because of that destruction, especially during the winter where the conifers provide some of the best shelter in the ongoing storms we've had over the last few weeks.