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.

Update on Snowy the Hostage

Arbor Lodge Tree Stats - 2013

Wow - what a day at the Tree Inventory Forum. After a summer of long work by many volunteers, we have completed the tree inventory for Arbor Lodge! Here are the results:
 * Arbor Lodge has 3,809 trees representing 99 types;
 * Fifty-three percent of all trees are 6" diameter at breast height (DBH) or less and 13% are larger than 18" DBH.
 * For tree condition, 42.9% of trees rate good, 47.4% rate fair, 8.8% rate poor, and less than 1% are dead.
 * Street trees are found in 96.7% improved rights-of-way sites; and 3.3% unimproved rights-of-way. 
 * 62% of all street tree planting spaces are currently stocked with trees. That means that there are MANY opportunities for more street trees!
 * That means that there are an estimated 1,938 empty spaces available for street tree planting in residential areas.
 * If we had to suddenly replace all of our street tree population due to some horrendous event, it would cost us $10,678,493 to do so.
 * And every year our street trees provide nearly $300,000 annually in environmental and aesthetic benefits to our neighborhood.

Interesting, huh? If you want to read the entire report, you can find it here. Now we begin the planning process of how we are to respond to this....more later...

Tree Inventory Meeting

Friends and Neighbors, The City of Portland has finished a tree inventory of our neighborhood, Arbor Lodge, and a few other neighborhoods in the City. They will be having an all-day meeting to discuss the results of the tree inventory, and making plans about how to proceed from here. If you want to either hear about the plans for trees in our neighborhood, or have your voice heard on which trees to plant, where to plant them, etc, then please consider signing up for this meeting. Here are the specifics: Saturday, November 9 9 am - 4 pm St. Johns Community Center 8427 N Central St. A free tee shirt and lunch are included if you register by October 31! Register online here or call 503-823-4484.

Vote!

Friends, Neighbors, Countrypeople,

Exercise your constitutional rights and vote today!  No matter your political persuasion be proud we live in a country where we're asked for our opinion from time to time.  Peace and Goodwill to all today...