Rebirth

This is the time of year when I am always amazed my plants have survived the winter, especially the older trees and shrubs in the backyard. The apple tree, lilacs, pear tree and viburnum are leafing. The dogwood is showing buds that will become flowers two years after half of the tree died and had to be cut down. The daffodils, after several false starts when the weather turned cold, have bloomed in profusion. Many of the irises I moved to another plot last year are growing despite chipmunks at first digging them up. 

After the haircut (Margo D. Beller)

As usual in the spring deer found a way to get through a weakness in the netting to eat some of the euonymous bushes as they started to put out fresh growth. So the fence posts were straightened and increased, the netting restrung. Before doing that I hacked the euoymous shrubs back severely. The plants are secure but now I wonder how I'll be able to do maintenance when the daffodils die back in a few weeks.

I have not dealt with putting the canna pots out front yet because we've had weather see-sawing between above and below average temperatures. With the chipmunks in mind I am going to limit what pots I put out front, including any herb or vegetable I may buy to grow.

Finally, I had to give my houseplants a haircut after leaving them untended (except for watering them) all winter. They won't go out to the enclosed porch before Memorial Day, and I plan to be very careful to monitor for any insect invasion, such as last year's fungal gnats.

Before it was brought inside for the winter in 2024.
(Margo D. Beller)

The most problematic, as usual, was the big houseplant.

You'll recall I had allowed this once-small houseplant to get so big it had become very difficult to move in winter, especially up and down the three steps to my front room. Last year I tried leaving it outside but when the wind blew it would fall over, despite its bracing. I moved it inside the porch into the corner where it would get a few hours of sun. Alas, when it got very cold the plant became very stressed. I've never intentionally killed a plant and wasn't about to start. So I brought it inside to the kitchen, but it didn't get any natural light there. I wound up moving it into a corner of my vestibule where it would get some light from the front room.

After several months a strange thing happened: Despite dim light and dry heat, it started growing new leaves for the first time in years.

First that growth was at the top, the new leaves scraping the ceiling. But then the plant started growing from the bottom. Now what to do? Well, when the top leaves started dying en masse, it was easy to decide to use my lopper and chop down what had become an unwieldy tree. With the braces that had held up the plant now gone (and used to reinforce the deer fencing) it was much easier to move the pot to the front room.

Spruce at right, watching the big plant.
(Margo D. Beller)

The other morning I told Spruce Bringsgreen, the blue spruce we planted in 2007, what I had done and why his plantmate would not look the same when back on the porch this year. Last year Spruce had watched over this plant once I moved it inside and fretted about what to do as winter approached.

"That's OK," he said. "I understand why that had to be done. Rather than kill it outright you gave it a new chance to live and grow."

True, I said, and that's what Spring is all about - rebirth.

Cleaning Up After The Trees

 In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp.

-- John Burroughs

October, the year's tenth month (with a name reflecting when it was the eighth month under the Roman calendar), is a time of transition. October is when you really notice it is darker later in the morning and earlier in the evening. October is when the weather switches from over 80 degrees one day to cold enough to break out the winter quilt the next. 

The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree - a small sample of
what I have been sweeping up from the patio.
(Margo D. Beller)

October is when the pumpkins, squashes and dried corn threshes start showing up on suburban doorsteps with the September mums. You realize you are closer to the end of the year than the beginning, and you wonder if there will be more snow this year than last.

For me, October is when I start thinking about bringing plants back into the house and putting up storm windows. I notice fewer catbirds in the yard but hear white-throated sparrows. Raptors are on the move and I see skeins of Canada geese overhead, heading south. Soon I will be putting out more seed feeders and suet.

The "flowers" on the ornamental grasses are the
best they've been in years. (Margo D. Beller)

Yes, there are also the colorful autumn leaves that send people into their cars to drive north to Vermont or the Adirondacks or other such hotspots. In my yard the red leaves of the maple and the dogwood, the brown of the white oak, the yellow of the elms and the scarlet of the red oak will be very pretty, at least for a short while. And then the usual October winds will blow them off the trees to become that much more mess to be cleaned up. 

Yes, October is when things start falling out of trees.

This week, the summery days gave way to foggy, cool nights and my sleep has been continually interrupted by the sharp rap of oak acorns falling on the enclosed porch's roof. The squirrels are foraging in the trees by day, and by night the trees must figure it's time to spread some seeds all over the ground beneath them to perpetuate the species. 

The dropping does not cease. Sometimes, if the acorn hits a metal gutter, it can sound like a gunshot. Most of the time, however, it sounds like someone is banging into something in the night.

Two types of nuts falling from my trees. (Margo D. Beller)

Despite the noise I am glad I have this roof over my porch. I have friends with open decks who are forced to huddle under the picnic table umbrella as acorn bombs drop from the sky. When my in-laws lived in New Jersey the big oak next to the driveway regularly pitted the old family sedan, making it look like it had been in a hail storm.

My problem is when the acorns make it hard to walk to the feeder pole or the water dish. That is why I have gone out on the patio three times - so far - to herd marble-like oak acorns with my broom into my large garden pail, lug it to a corner of my yard and dump it for any squirrel, chipmunk, deer, woodpecker, jay or crow that might want a snack.

But there are many, many more acorns all over the lawn, and even when I am drinking coffee on the porch, congratulating myself on a job well done, I hear the acorns continuing to drop. It will be like this for weeks.

What hangs up will eventually come down. (Margo D. Beller)

It is not the tree's fault, of course. It is just trying to survive. If the trees were in the woods this would be a barely noticed process. But these trees are not in the woods, they border the property of my suburban yard. And so I notice big time.

There are some years when there are many more acorns than there are squirrels, like this year. There are some years there are many more squirrels than there are acorns, like last year. This boom and bust is not as random as it may seem.

Acorns are seeds and they are dropped by the oaks to make more trees. But the seeds are also food. The more food there is, the more an animal eats and then the more it breeds. More animals mean more food is needed. When seeds are plentiful, everyone is happy - the animals and the trees. But if there are too many animals and not enough seeds, there will be a decrease in new trees. That seems to prompt trees to shut down making seeds, which then cuts back on the animal population because there is less food.

The technical name for this boom and bust cycling is masting. According to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, mast is the fruit of forest trees, in this case acorns. During "mast" years, the trees "go into overdrive, producing enormous amounts of nuts." Then comes the bust, a year or more when there are very few nuts produced.

How the pretty autumn leaves will eventually end up...
(Margo D. Beller)

Why does this happen? Again, from the Foundation:

Scientists don’t know the exact trigger for mast years, but it most likely has to do with climate events in past stressful years. Trees may produce an abundance of offspring as a hedge in case the stressful times continue. Stressors may include droughts, heat waves, or cold spells.

I'm no scientist but I know there is a lot of wacky stuff going on in the atmosphere around the world - a rare tropical storm in California, abundant wildfires in Canada, deadly floods in Libya. We are on pace to have the hottest year on record after having the hottest past few months on record.

... and the pods. (Margo D. Beller)

Closer to home, this has been a very wet year. The same abundance of rain that has helped keep my dogwood tree alive, produced the "flowers" on my ornamental grasses for the first time in years and kept the spider mites and white flies off my flowers likely produced favorable conditions for the oak trees to produce acorns after a year when not many were produced. The old trees have grown and now more of their branches are above the porch roof, something I didn't notice until the acorns started raining down heavier than usual this year. 

The oaks are not alone, of course. Many other trees are now dropping their seeds, including the bane of my existence, the black locust. October is when I notice how many of the long, black pods are hanging, waiting for some signal or gust of wind to drop like a blanket over my lawn. Like the acorns, eventually they will all come down and be swept away, to be forgotten until the next October. 

Spruce Has A Question

I am now beginning to read reports of warblers passing through the area again. Southbound migration begins! To find these birds I will have to go elsewhere. I do not live in a forest. The only trees are those left by the developers of my suburban neighborhood on the border between my property and my backyard neighbor, and those trees that were planted by the previous owners of my home or by me. I see birds but not many migrants.

Sick dogwood (Margo D. Beller)

I was looking at one of those trees the other day, the dogwood that is not doing so well. It is not completely dead, and I still have hope that by cutting off the dead branches the rest will survive and perhaps bloom next year and produce food for the birds.

As I looked, the Colorado blue spruce I planted nearby called me over.

"Margo, the human across the street cut back my brother spruce. Why? He looks awful!"

Exposed tree, partially
covered by neighboring trees.
(Margo D. Beller)

I looked over and saw what he saw. Spruce branches had been cut, gathered and dumped at the curb. The tall Norway spruce looked like a dowager raising her long skirt to reveal her skinny legs. 

Around the tree were small shrubs. Perhaps they had always been there and the new homeowner - more of a hands-on gardener than the previous guy ever was - wanted the small shrubs to be seen. Or the lower branches got in the way of his mowing, or the cars using the driveway. I don't know. I don't talk about such things with my neighbors because it isn't my business, just as the deer netting protecting my flowers isn't theirs. Call it suburban etiquette. 

Some of the plants protected by deer netting
(Margo D. Beller)

I looked back at my tree, nicknamed Spruce Bringsgreen. He is now 16 years old and, I would guess, about 50 feet tall. His upper branches provide shelter for roosting birds in winter and occasionally one builds a nest in him during the spring. But his lower branches, I admit, do get in the way. When my husband used to do the lawn the branches would get caught in his mower. (That isn't an issue with the mower our lawn guy drives around the yard now, apparently.) So I would trim one or two branches, which did not give easily to my lopper. Spruce is one tough tree.

Spruce's lower branches (Margo D. Beller)

The lower branches also shelter a variety of weeds including my nemesis, ground ivy, mainly to the edge where the weeds can get some sun and where Spruce's dropped leaves aren't creating a thick mat. Spruce's "leaves" are prickly, as they are on all spruces (which is why deer don't eat them), and that means I can expect to be scratched despite my best efforts to cover myself. 

Still, cutting back one-third of the tree seems to me a bit much. 

"Spruce," I said, "I do not know why the humans in this area do things like that. They seem to cut down what appear to be healthy trees for no reason I can figure out. But sometimes there is a reason. You'll remember I had to cut down that dead ash earlier this year. People plant things and they also uproot things, sometimes big things like that spruce. But rest assured I will never do to you what he did to your brother. I promise."

It might be my imagination but Spruce seemed to stand taller after that.

Spruce Bringsgreen standing tall (Margo D. Beller)

Growing Concern

I like trees. I've written about my despair when they are cut down, including by me. But after a recent walk I had to wonder about the unintended consequences of planting some trees in a particular area.

Saplings, May 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

In the Central Park of Morris County not far from me a field was planted with tree saplings a number of years ago. All you could see were rows of protective tubing. In autumn 2021 I went for a walk in that area after a long absence and noticed the saplings had grown tall enough to be seen above the tubing.

The other week I went back and the saplings were even taller. I could now identify many of the trees including tulip poplars, maples, even at least one sweetgum. What happens when they all grow up, I wondered. Tulip poplars alone can grow 70 to 90 feet tall and have a 35- to 50-foot spread. It is also a fast-growing hardwood tree, which might explain why it was planted here.

Saplings, November 2021
(Margo D. Beller)

I can't remember exactly when Morris County put in the saplings. It could've been after hurricane Sandy blew through in 2012 and toppled trees in this field, once part of a working farm associated with the old Greystone hospital. The saplings could've been planted as part of the work the county did when it took over the land to turn it into a multi-use park.

The field in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012,
which might be the reason more trees
were planted. (Margo D. Beller)

During that time, the old hospital buildings including the wards, the farm and the Kirkbride administration building came down. Old or damaged trees came down with them. (Many other trees that came down in a different area were neither sick nor damaged. They were in the way of a very large planned soccer field.) 

This old farm field usually draws a lot of birds depending on the season. In past years I've found different types of sparrows, warblers, vireos and thrushes. But now I have to wonder what will happen when the trees grow to their full height. The area is already changing. The grasses around the saplings have not been cut and have become very long and weedy. This is good for some birds but not for others. 

Once the trees have grown and darken the area it will change even more. Will there be more forest dwellers? Bird that look for insects or build nests in treetops? I fear the sparrows and other grassland birds that prefer wood edges to deep woods will go elsewhere. 

I'll just have to see what happens when those trees throw shade.

Life and Dying in the Backyard

Every spring I am surprised by my plants coming back after the winter. This year is no exception despite temperatures that reached the 80s in February and the 30s in April, with very little snow but lots of rain. Although some plants did not get as tall or as showy as usual, they did flower. The same is true of the trees and the shrubs. Both the apple and the pear trees have flowered, despite being severely cut back early this year. Where there are flowers there will be fruit, albeit fruit too high for me to easily pick.

Dogwood flowers in 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

This post will focus on one particular tree.

I have lived in my house for over 25 years. In my suburban neighborhood "woods" means trees on the property border. Any trees planted in the front or back yards have been put in by the homeowner. Over the years I've had to cut down yard trees for various reasons. I have, however, planted two trees - the blue spruce we nicknamed Spruce Bringsgreen and a flowering dogwood.

I planted the dogwood because in the fall it is supposed to produce red berries for the birds. Since that tree was planted in 2007 I've learned berries are not guaranteed. Like the other flowering plants, it depends on the weather. Some years there would be lovely pink flowers on the dogwood. But that did not necessarily mean berries would follow. Some years yes, some years no. The fresh green leaves would go red in the fall. 

Dogwood berries, 2019. Note the discoloration
in the autumn leaves. (Margo D. Beller)

Since planting that tree I took it as a given that once established it would always be there. But like any other living thing, trees die. Sometimes they are killed by man, who cuts them down or pollutes the air. Sometimes they are killed by insects, as was the ash tree I had to cut down because of the emerald ash borer. Sometimes, however, they are killed by bacteria or fungus.

I don't remember when during the winter I first began to notice one branch was missing some of its bark but I did eventually notice, especially when more bare patches began to appear. I became alarmed when the apple and pear trees, the viburnum, the forsythia and the lilacs started leafing out and the dogwood remained bare. I thought the tree was dead.

My first indication something was wrong.
(Margo D. Beller)

I was going to write about it here. I even had a name for my post - Dead as a Dogwood.

But reports of the dogwood's demise were premature - after a recent heavy rain it started to leaf out.

Not everywhere, however. The part of the tree where the bark has come off remains bare, as are a few of the lower branches. 

I did some research into dogwood diseases, and to my horror discovered there are quite a few. The one that appears the closest to what is happening with this tree has the awful name of "crown canker."

Hoping for the best, I wrapped the lower part of the tree to prevent the bark that was just starting to flake from getting worse. I used my lopper on some of the lower branches and will have to use a saw or chainsaw on other parts. Because the tree went straight to leafing there will be no flowers. The leaves are small and I doubt there will be fruit. I don't even know if the tree will be alive next year.

(Margo D. Beller)

As I looked at some of the pictures I've taken of this tree over the years I realize the signs were there: discoloring in the leaves, the irregular production of fruit. It was not until the bark started falling off that I realized this tree is sick. Should I have used the sprinkler last year instead of letting the grass go brown and deprive the tree roots of water during the summer drought? Should I have added more mulch to what I had already put down at the base of the tree? 

Dogwood leaves, 2023 (Margo D. Beller)

I don't know. This year I'll use the sprinkler more and I'll use my saw on the dead branches. The tree may be disfigured but I hope it will recover. Or it may die. Living things die, even trees.

In the meantime, as I have for the past two years, I have put up the house wren nest box on one of the living dogwood branches. I heard a wren singing the other morning as I put out the feeders. The bird investigated the box, then flew to another yard. Will it be back? That, too, is unknown.

Spruce Bringsgreen Speaks!

Hello again! Margo told me that some of you have been asking after me. It has been a long time [Editor's Note: Nearly five years, to be exact.] since the last time I've written in this blog, so it's high time I tell you what I've been up to lately.

So far, about 50 feet. [Colorado blue spruces can grow 75 feet tall in the wild but 30-60 feet in the yard, so I think Spruce might be exaggerating a little.)

Spruce Bringsgreen after the Feb. 28, 2023, snow.
(Modified photo by Margo D. Beller)

Yes, I've been growing. I put out my first cones so I am now a mature Colorado blue spruce. I'm the pride of Margo's yard and, unlike some of the other trees she had cut back recently, I've been left alone to get bigger and spread out. Maybe a bit of tickling of my bottom branches as that guy she now has mowing the lawn instead of her husband works around me. The deer leave me alone because they know I'm prickly and don't cotton to being nibbled on.

It has been very nice in this yard. We haven't had a lot of snow in a very long time except once, which gave me a thick, warm coat. [See photo.] But that didn't last long. The way I am built, the stuff just slides off once the sun comes out. Soon enough I am my old self again.

Spruce dressed up for Christmas, 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

However, I will say that it has been sad to see some of the old neighbors cut down. Up and down this block the tree cutters roll by in their trucks and the air is soon filled with the sound of sawing, mulching and stump pulling. I know Margo dislikes it very much because she tells me that. Some of the old guys were sick and had to come down, I guess, but some of them I don't know why they had to go. Maybe they were in the way. 

The cedar I can see by Margo's front door was cut in half by the people who came to do her tree work. That cedar got almost as tall as the roof, and it used to provide shelter for some of the small birds. It also has softer leaves than mine and the deer would get at it, as they get to most things. 

[Note: One of the biggest problems in suburbia is people planting trees too close to the house. This cedar, and one on the other side of the front door, I had planted in 1995, when I was a new homeowner and didn't know better, as I was to learn about most of the deer-attracting plants I put in before I put up netting to save them. The other cedar eventually died after an ice storm and I cut it back myself. I needed professional help on this second one because it was too tall. It would almost double over when covered with snow.] 

The cedar before it had to be cut back.
(Margo D. Beller)

Now the birds take shelter in my branches. Being so tall, they can be high off the ground and away from those four-legged predators that seem to come through this yard with increasing frequency, particularly at night. 

I don't mind sheltering these birds. The ones that go "dee, dee, dee" [black-capped chickadees] are fine. They stay quiet, fly out for food, eat it elsewhere and then come back to me to hide or get away from the wind or to rest. But those black and white ones [male juncos] are terrible. They fight each other, they fly in and out, they make a lot of noise as they get in each other's way. But they'll be gone once it gets warm.

Sometimes a redbreasted bird [a robin] will bring bits of material and make a nest high on my shoulder, but it rarely stays. I don't take it personally.

It's hard to believe I've been planted in this spot for as long as I have [since November 2007]. It feels good to be rooted. I know Margo comes out to admire me frequently. I've no fear she will be cutting me down. That's about all a tree can hope for nowadays.

An Inconvenient Tree

The apple tree needed to be pruned. That much I knew. Its branches had grown long and tall and at least one high branch would drop its fruit behind the deer netting on the other side of the walkway. (I hope she forgives me.)

Overgrown apple tree, 2022 (Margo D. Beller)

The pear tree also needed pruning, to at least slow down the squirrels climbing to the roof of the screened porch. I did some pruning but there was one area I could not reach unless I stood on the very top of the ladder, and I was not going to do that even with my trusty spotter standing below. 

Pruned apple tree, 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

The arborvitae to the side of the front door had also gotten too big. At one time I kept it pruned back but what with illness and age I stopped and so it grew as high as my second-floor office window. House sparrows would fight each other noisily in it outside my open window. Every so often I scared a cardinal or other bird out of it when checking the mailbox after dark. In winter it would bow low under the weight of the snow.

Overgrown arborvitae, 2022
(Margo D. Beller)

All these trees needing work was expected. The dead ash tree was not.

Shortened arborvitae, 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

I didn't even know it was an ash until the tree guy came to give me an estimate. He took one look and said it was a dead ash. The tree trunk was light brown and it was full of small holes I hadn't noticed before. When the leaves had come down a few months ago I thought the branches at the top didn't look healthy. I should've known something was up when a redbellied woodpecker started whacking at the tree trunk during the summer, no doubt smelling all the treats inside.

Overgrown pear tree, 2022
(Margo D. Beller)

The ash stood near the property line with one of my neighbors, who had some of her trees cut down in November. She had left me a note, telling me the tree "near the pines" was "full of bugs." She offered to pay for cutting it down. Eventually I figured out the "pines" meant the yew hedge and the tree she meant was the one I had called the "weed tree" for decades.

Pruned pear tree, 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

Why did the tree suddenly die? It was a victim of the emerald ash borer, native to Russia, Asia, Japan and South Korea. The first one came to the U.S. in a shipment from Asia in 2002. It was first sighted in Michigan. Now, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it has been reported in 36 states including New Jersey, where I live.

Ash borer infestation was the reason my county's park people chopped down a lot of infested ash trees growing on either side of one of my favorite hiking trails in the winter of 2018, leaving the fallen trees until the next spring. It was a horrific sight seeing all those dead or dying trees. And now my yard was similarly affected.

I've never liked this tree and I'd often thought about having it cut down. In the early years of my living here it would send up daughter trees from a root under the yew hedge, which meant I had to crawl under the hedge to cut them down. Its roots then switched direction and started coming to the surface next to and then through my ornamental grass garden, forcing me to walk carefully to avoid tripping when I did yard work. The roots even broke a sprinkler pipe next to one of the plants. (Luckily there was no leak and the pipe was fixed the next spring before the sprinkler was turned on.) Unlike the nearby cherry tree, the ash did not provide fruit but strings of seeds that fell in clusters. 

Open sky where the ash used to be, 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

I did not take my neighbor up on her kind offer. Instead, I called my own tree guy because, as I said, I had other trees that needed trimming anyway and I wanted to be sure any tree removal wouldn't affect the nearby plants. According to the guy who gave me the estimate, I have no other ash trees (or at least no trees that looked sick). 

It took a tad over a month from the time I signed the contract before the work could be done, today. Four trucks arrived at 7:30 a.m. and it was all over less than 90 minutes later. 

Looking out the back door, the first thing I noticed was the sky, a big hole where the tree used to be. I have written before about the "hole in the sky" created when a neighbor across the street took down a lot of trees. Whenever trees are cut the noise of saws and stump grinding bothers me, particularly if the tree being taken down appeared to me to be perfectly healthy but in the "wrong" place. An inconvenient tree. I'd shut the windows and try to block out the noise somehow, which was particularly aggravating when I was trying to work. I thought of the disruption to the birds and hoped no nests were destroyed in the process.

Today, on the New Year's Day (observed) holiday, when I was not working, the noise still agitated me, even though this was MY tree work being done and there are no birds nesting at this time of year to disrupt (tho' I'm sure they avoided the feeders while the work was going on). Here I was, doing the same thing I'd look down on my neighbors for doing. I know it was a dead tree but maybe they looked at the ash and thought it healthy and sniffed, "Another inconvenient tree."

Lesson learned.

Stump, 2023
(Margo D. Beller)

Now, the cut apple and pear look neater. The last time the apple was trimmed it produced a bumper crop the next spring. The pear tree only sets flowers on old wood, so I'm hoping this cuts back on fruit. (It was to get a pear that a heavy bear once tried to climb that tree, only to break two-thirds of its lower branches.) Even the arborvitae doesn't look as bad as I feared.

As for the ash, I left the stump. Pulling it would've upended the nearby lilacs, cherry tree and plants in the ornamental grass garden. Eventually the roots will die and decompose. I tried to count the tree rings but got as far as 40 before stopping. The ash tree could've been planted when the house was built in 1964 or it might've been one of the lucky trees that survived when the meadow was cleared to build the houses on my suburban street.

Well, thanks to an invasive little insect from the other side of the world, its luck ran out. 

When Timing Is Everything

I am no expert. I do not have the training to understand what trees need to grow and thrive aside from the basics of sunlight and water. But this coronavirus year of 2020, which has been topsy-turvy in so many ways, has changed the dynamics of the trees in my front and back yard. 

In this case, events worked in my favor.

All in a day's work. There are more leaves on either
side of what you see here. Nov. 21, 2000
(Margo D. Beller)

I've written before of my front yard black locust trees. The ones on my property - planted on the orders of some long-ago functionary on my town's shade tree commission - are all male trees except for one female. The locusts are the first trees to drop their small, yellow leaves and long stems everywhere I walk. These are the leaves that get tracked into the house.

The amount of long, black locust seed pods on the female tree varies from year to year. Some years, when the tree is full of them, a wind storm drops so many pods the lawn turns black in some areas. Raking them is heavy, tiring work but at least it is only one tree. Several houses down the street have double the work.

Some years, especially the year after a bountiful year, fewer pods are produced, as tho' the tree is catching her breath. This turned out to be one such year, as it was for my apple tree and the white oaks' acorns. Most of the pods came down in one strong wind storm, and because they were so close to the curb there was less distance to rake them. What few were left hanging came down the other week after a particularly violent storm, where the squall line was thin and intense, the wind blowing the heavy rain to look like waves on my street. What detritus was washed away.

The apple tree provided few fruits this year, a relief
for me and the house wren that nests in the box
I put there. (Margo D. Beller)

Meanwhile, in the backyard, oak leaves came raining down earlier than usual. We had our first frost in mid-October and had a week of freezing temperatures, followed by a period of warmer than usual temperatures before a hard freeze at month's end. And we had rain. The white oak, ash (what I once thought were elm trees) and maple trees dropped their leaves seeming at once, thickly covering the grass. 

Luckily, MH had plans to do one more mowing and was able to mulch all the leaves. Mulched leaves help the lawn by decomposing and providing nutrients. Mulching leaves also means not having to rake them into loose piles in the street for the town to take away, presuming the November winds don't blow them back.

After the last intense storm - and we have had a number of intense rain and wind storms this season - I realized all the white oak leaves were off the trees. In fact, all the leaves were off all the trees (except for the red oak trees in the next yard; leaves on the lower part of these trees will stay on until spring), including the apple, the pear and the dogwood. The viburnum shrub still had leaves, which turned a deep bronze (so deep I had to look closely to see if the berries were still there; they were). But that was it. Even the walnut tree in the front yard on the border between our property and a neighbor's had dropped all its leaves. Many has been the year when we've finished with the oak leaves, generally the last to fall, only to find the walnut still leafy, giving me more work to remove the thin, red-brown leaves for weeks after.

So aside from sweeping up baskets full of leaves that had accumulated on the back patio and putting them into compost, I had done very little raking this year. That changed yesterday.

First, I went out with my rake to pull leaves away from the house, the areas at the base of the feeder poles, the flood wall, the patch where I have ornamental grasses. Then, as the leaf blowers elsewhere started their racket, I put on my noise-cancelling earmuffs and began my own blowing. Once MH got himself together we started hauling big tarps full of leaves to the street - ultimately, five tarps full. I left the leaves that piled up around shrubs and other plants. These leaves will get raked out and composted in the spring when the growing begins.

It is essential dahlia tubers be completely
dry before they are stored so they don't rot. This
was one of the many chores I did earlier
than I had last year. (Margo D. Beller)

Yes, it was aching work. The raking put a blister on my hand despite protective gloves while the blower's vibrations affected my arms and hands. MH's sore knees made hauling the tarps to the curb slow work for me and at one point I stepped wrong and hurt my ankle. But the job is done - what blows onto the lawn will stay there until the next time MH mows. Soon enough I expect snow to blanket the lawn anyway.

I keep a sort of almanac on old calendars. Today I looked at it. I didn't mark the last day we raked but last year - when I was underemployed until December and we traveled to Maryland and then to NH during November - I handled my winter prep chores in early November. This year, when I've been working at home and have no plans to travel very far for the holidays, I did those same chores on the last day of October, which was a Saturday. Why so early? On that day, I woke up to find the foliage blackened on the cannas and dahlias, and the coleus plants dead. So I composted and stored for winter. Last year I could do these same chores over the course of several weeks, maybe because 2019 was one of the warmest years ever.

Was the roller coaster of freeze followed by warmer than normal temperatures followed by freeze this year why the oak and walnut trees dropped their leaves so early or why were there fewer acorns, apples and locust pods? Was it the long periods of summer dryness after a wet, cool spring? Or were the trees as stressed as we humans are by what is going on around us in this pandemic year? Did climate change play more of a part than usual?

As I said, I'm no expert. I just know what I see. The relief of finishing one of the year's hardest chores is tempered by a vague sense of dread.

A Hole in the Sky

I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.
-- Joyce Kilmer

What would Jersey boy Joyce Kilmer think of the suburbs now? I don't think he'd be too happy.

My new frontyard view: Suburban lawn just so, hedges clipped,
inconvenient tree removed, big hole in the sky.
(Margo D. Beller)

When he wrote his poet in 1914, his home state was not nearly as built up as it is now. There were no ribbons of multi-lane superhighways crisscrossing the land. There were no "office parks" on what was once farmland. There were no sprawling housing or retail developments with names like "The Preserve," "The Collection," "Town Centre" or "The Shoppes at ..." 

And I'm willing to bet there were many more trees. (Warning: Another jeremiad ahead.)

I have been living in the northern NJ suburbs for over 25 years after decades in parts of New York City. I wanted more space, quiet and privacy. Now I have my quarter acre, different trees and shrubs (some I planted, most already here) and birds coming to feeders. Much of the time it is quiet, so quiet I can hear cars or conversations from some distance away.

But there are things about the suburbs that still disturb me after all this time.

Large areas of woods have been removed for shopping malls along one major road near my home, creating more traffic (as well as more stop lights to handle it). It is still hard to look at one of the supermarkets I visit without remembering the woods torn down to build it.

When it comes to residential development, the unspoken mantra here is, I do what I want in my yard. As long as it doesn't affect you, it's none of your business. I don't know what my neighbors (with one exception) think of the bird feeders or my deer fencing or my compost pile but since it's in my yard and not affecting their property it's not their problem.

When the longtime neighbor across the street, the one-man homeowners association who has taken loud and long exception to the deer fencing in my front yard, decided to cut one of the very tall trees in his backyard, it was hard for me to watch.

My new backyard view, with remains of viburnum in center.
(Margo D. Beller)

The crew, using horrible-sounding saws and a grinder, took a day to destroy this tree I've seen from my front door for 25 years. They also cut some of the lower branches of the remaining three, which was a relief considering I thought he would be removing all four. But what was left behind looks unnatural, ugly. There is a big hole where the tree used to be. All this guy cared about, I'm guessing, is the damage this tree was causing to the fence he had put in when the trees were, no doubt, much smaller. (This is based on what MH saw in that backyard when he was returning from an errand.)

This neighbor is not alone. Many put trees and shrubs too close to a fence or a house foundation and have to take them out before there's too much structural damage.

In addition, with the improving economy - until the coronavirus closing of businesses threw millions of people out of work and whacked it down to Great Depression levels - many of the houses on my street have new owners. It seems one of the first things these people do to make the house their own is rip up what look to me like perfectly good plants. One new homeowner obliterated a big, lovely, perennial flower garden created by the previous owner when Hurricane Sandy in 2012 toppled a spruce in the front yard. It's been replaced by a lawn. Another took down two huge pines in that front yard, which would've thrown welcome shade on the house in summer, after judging them to be too close. They were replaced with tiny plants on either side of a new front path.

I like trees, even those that drop leaves or pods I am forced to rake every year. They breathe in the carbon dioxide we exhale and breathe out the oxygen we need. They provide shade. They provide a place for birds to rest, forage, build a nest. Without trees, flooding rains would wash away soil. Lawns would burn to a crisp. My mid-Atlantic state would look like someplace out of the wide-open West. 

But hack back they do, every year, whether the plants are healthy and flowering or not.

One fewer tree for birds like the white-breasted nuthatch to use for rest and
finding food. (Margo D. Beller)

Then there are the yard nuts, the people who cut their lawns every week whether it's needed or not or who, in the case of my backyard neighbor (a woman I've had problems with for years), decided to cut back or down every shrub, planted by her parents, on the edge of her lawn so she could have an easier time mowing. In 25 years out here I've never understood why people feel they must cut back trees or flowering shrubs like forsythia in spring instead of waiting until the flowers are gone or until fall when the plants would go dormant anyway. I guess human convenience trumps all.

One such shrub this woman cut way back was a huge viburnum I'd always thought was on my property until MH, hearing my screams (ignored by the neighbor) went out to check the property line and confirmed that, unfortunately, what was left behind was on her side of the line. No more place for birds, no more privacy.

The birds have since adapted and use other shrubs. But I have not adapted so well because there is a gaping hole.

However, I can do something about this particular situation - plant my own tall trees or shrubs to fill the hole on my side of the property line and block this neighbor out (and vice versa).

I don't think Robert Frost had the NJ suburbs in mind when he wrote that "good fences make good neighbors," but in this case it fits.

A Tree Grows

Several winters ago I was taking a walk in the cold early morning along a road near the local dog park and happened to see this little tree rising above the packed snow. Why had I never noticed this before?

Spruce, Feb. 1, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

I looked at it as closely as I could because it was up a little hill and I didn't trust my footing on the snow. It is most definitely a conifer, a spruce from the way it is holding out its branches. It was getting lots of light thanks to the taller oaks having lost their leaves. Somehow the deer had not browsed it to nubs. Deer, as a rule, don't browse spruce trees because their leaves - the needles - are hard and prickly compared with the softer leaves of a yew or an arborvitae, something I know from painful experience.

But when a tree is small, a deer will taste the leaves and see if it is to its liking. That is why when we bought and planted Spruce Bringsgreen 10 years ago, I put in fence posts and strung deer netting around the little tree for the winter. I did it only the one time because Spruce, like all blue spruces, has proven to be a quick grower. It is now over 15 feet tall and its leaves are hard and sharp. The deer have left it alone.

This little tree is not a blue spruce, I think, but it is very much alive and growing thanks to taking advantage of its location on the top of a small hill.

Later that year, weeds surrounded the small spruce, obscuring it. I would not have seen it had I not known it was there. Thick stands of the invasive Japanese knotweed grew along the road in front of that hill, making it hard for a deer to get up there even if it was so inclined. Besides, with all the barking dogs at the dog park most deer, I've found, keep to the other end of the road where there are more open fields and, in summer, tall grass for browsing or bedding down on.

Down the road are much taller spruces, several of which were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Somehow a seed got blown or carried up the road by a squirrel or chipmunk, was planted and then left alone, allowing a tree to come up and replace at least one of those that fell.

There are so many seeds floating around us during the warmer months. This is how plants perpetuate themselves. Sometimes they put out fruits eaten by birds or rodents who either plant them as droppings or put them in the ground to store for the coming winter. Some seeds, like those of ragweed, make us sneeze. Some seeds blow into places where they manage to grow where least expected. Early on in our ownership of our house, we had many more apple trees and many more apples eaten by squirrels and deer. Several times I had to dig up apple tree seedlings from another part of the yard. Now that we only have the one tree whose apples I use, we have not had any seedlings in years. But I'm still vigilant.

In the woods, seeds fall and, if they are in an area where light comes in because of a gap in the taller trees, they may grow, presuming they are left alone and get enough moisture.

Every tree puts out hundreds of seeds every year because not very many will be lucky enough to  germinate.

This little tree, however, managed to be planted, left alone and given the right conditions to grow. It is a survivor, which is why I celebrate it. I hope to see it grow as tall as its parent.