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I. M. Gei posted:Alright I fired off a bunch of tree removal quote requests on AngiesList, and we’re gonna talk to our homeowner’s insurance company tomorrow to see what they say. I’ll try to talk to the neighbors tomorrow too; so far they don’t seem to have noticed what happened, or if they have then they haven’t approached us about it. Why the gently caress would you get tree removal quotes on a tree that is not yours and is not on your property before even having spoken to the owners of said tree? I thought you didn't want to start a feud. If I were your neighbor and you approached me about my tree with removal quotes I'd tell you to go gently caress yourself. But if you came to me about the fallen branch and simply asked me to do something about it I'd happily oblige (and then get the trees trimmed to prevent future incidents). Edit: or did you just mean removal of the fallen branch? Then never mind. Just don't go to your neighbor with talk about having them get rid of their tree. Asking them to trim them would be appropriate, I believe. If it were me I'd offer to help pay for trimming if they had objections for money reasons. Queen Victorian fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Apr 12, 2021 |
# ? Apr 12, 2021 06:54 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 14:15 |
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Queen Victorian posted:So there's a scraggly bush along the fence that flowers sometimes with orange flowers, and I have no clue what it is: Pretty sure this is a flowering quince! Does it have any thorns? It might actually thicken up faster if you prune back some of the longer shoots in autumn, since that'll encourage it to make denser growth
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 08:43 |
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Queen Victorian posted:Why the gently caress would you get tree removal quotes on a tree that is not yours and is not on your property before even having spoken to the owners of said tree? I thought you didn't want to start a feud. We just want to get the fallen limb off of our roof and off the power line. As far as I know it’s possible that we can do that without the tree guys needing to go into the neighbor’s yard; we can’t really know that one way or another until they come and take a look at it themselves. That could be days from now though. We’ve got plenty of time to talk to the neighbors between now and then. The biggest concern is that the limb is still partially attached to the tree and the rest of it could still fall off at any time and cause some actual damage. The tree crew might be able to cut off enough of it from our side of the fence to keep poo poo from falling on us without going onto the neighbor’s property, or they might not. Or the neighbors might offer to trim it themselves, in which case we can cancel our quote appointments or push them back a week or two.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 09:16 |
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I. M. Gei posted:We just want to get the fallen limb off of our roof and off the power line. As far as I know it’s possible that we can do that without the tree guys needing to go into the neighbor’s yard; we can’t really know that one way or another until they come and take a look at it themselves. That could be days from now though. We’ve got plenty of time to talk to the neighbors between now and then. Actually sounds like you should just speak to your neighbors ASAP, assuming they are reasonable people.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 11:12 |
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Yeah seriously, just go over and talk to the neighbors about it. Sorry for the knee jerk post - it was late and I had just written about one of my personal nightmare scenarios and the removal terminology use made it sound like you wanted to fulfill said nightmare scenario. fuzzy_logic posted:Pretty sure this is a flowering quince! Does it have any thorns? It might actually thicken up faster if you prune back some of the longer shoots in autumn, since that'll encourage it to make denser growth Ooo that looks about right, actually. I'll check for thorns. Seems to be about three plants - or maybe just offshoots of one another. I will research pruning - the pics I found were awesome and they look so much better than my specimen and I would like mine to look that good.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 17:13 |
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I’m wondering if anyone has some ideas. We live in a very shady spot zone 6b. I’ve tried to put grass seed down so many times, but it’s too shady. All we can seem to grow is moss. That would be fine except moss gets so easily kicked up leaving bare dirt patches everywhere. We also have a toddler who will be making this situation worse soon. What can I grow that will stay put?
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 18:31 |
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:I’m wondering if anyone has some ideas. I like groundcover thyme as a lawn alternative, and it should do fine in shade but might need some help getting established.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 18:47 |
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Schmeichy posted:I like groundcover thyme as a lawn alternative, and it should do fine in shade but might need some help getting established. This, but I have seen Oregano take over a lawn unintentionally and the owners found it so nice and pleasant to walk barefoot on they just let it be. If you insist on grass, it may be more adverse conditions than just a bit of shade causing moss build up and there are grass seed mixes that do better in shade.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 19:10 |
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Posted a question in the gardening thread that may have been more appropriate for this one, is linking posts OK? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3085672&pagenumber=419#post513940985
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 20:14 |
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:We live in a very shady spot zone 6b. I’ve tried to put grass seed down so many times, but it’s too shady. All we can seem to grow is moss. That would be fine except moss gets so easily kicked up leaving bare dirt patches everywhere. We also have a toddler who will be making this situation worse soon. We're thinking about bumping our beds out a little more into the shadiest parts of the lawn and filling them with pachysandra, which is growing beautifully in deep shade at our library a half-mile down the road. Since it's not a grass analogue or soft like thyme (which I do love in containers), though, it wouldn't really provide your little one with a "grassy" area to play. And it can get expensive if you have a lot of space to fill.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 20:25 |
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:Im wondering if anyone has some ideas. Is your whole lawn super shady or just parts of it? If it's just parts of it you may be better off putting in shrubs or more garden or just a shade loving groundcover that isn't walkable. If it is your whole lawn you might try out a few different shade groundcovers and see what does well. As mentioned some creeping thymes are alright with shade (and make a nice lawn) though I have found them fairly slow to spread. Mentha requienii (Corsican mint) might also work but it won't stand up to super heavy foot traffic and it will die off when it gets cold (should reseed itself for next year, though).
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 20:41 |
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Thyme actually sounds like an awesome idea. Thank you! RickRogers posted:If you insist on grass, [b]it may be more adverse conditions than just a bit of shade causing moss build up[b] and there are grass seed mixes that do better in shade. What else could be causing it? Hirayuki posted:We're thinking about bumping our beds out a little more into the shadiest parts of the lawn and filling them with pachysandra, which is growing beautifully in deep shade at our library a half-mile down the road. Since it's not a grass analogue or soft like thyme (which I do love in containers), though, it wouldn't really provide your little one with a "grassy" area to play. And it can get expensive if you have a lot of space to fill. There’s pachysandra all over here. It’s nice, but a bit too bushy for the whole yard. It grows amazingly well here.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 20:43 |
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Wallet posted:Is your whole lawn super shady or just parts of it? If it's just parts of it you may be better off putting in shrubs or more garden or just a shade loving groundcover that isn't walkable. I was sooo interested in Corsican mint, but it apparently won’t withstand the winter months here. Too bad because it’s beautiful. It’s our whole lawn except a small 30’x30’ area.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 20:46 |
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:Thyme actually sounds like an awesome idea. Thank you! Poor drainage/compaction/low fertility/pH etc. Tbh I hate lawn care as it is always an uphill struggle and sometimes the (literal) underlying cause is that the whole soil structure is terrible for grass. And even when you have it looking good, without a proper yearly maintenance plan (aerification/scarification/4 to 5 times a year fertilizing/Autumn feed/raking/more raking/mowing at an appropriate hight) it can go back to poo poo so quickly that it's not worth trying to get it looking good in the first place. I think what you basically want is a nice surface for your kid to play on though, so grass is actually not necessary, or at least not everywhere. Maybe in the worst most shaded areas have a play zone with a swing or whatever, where you could just cover it in woodchips or something would make a nice soft landing?
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 20:59 |
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:
Mulch it and plant some azaleas/rhododendrons would be my idea. They love shade and acidic soil.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 21:19 |
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:I was sooo interested in Corsican mint, but it apparently won’t withstand the winter months here. Too bad because it’s beautiful. It won't withstand the winter but your lawn is going to be browned out anyway. It should reseed itself for next year, though, so you could maybe mix it with something else.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 21:30 |
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Glad I asked you all. All good info. Thank you! Our soil is definitely acidic. I can try to work on that and the compacted soil as well. Wallet posted:It won't withstand the winter but your lawn is going to be browned out anyway. It should reseed itself for next year, though, so you could maybe mix it with something else. Ok now I might have to seriously think about doing this.
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 21:44 |
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My cactus is enjoying my new house
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# ? Apr 12, 2021 22:20 |
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You better feed that thing something before it sniffs you out
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 02:49 |
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so there’s colocasia bulbs for sale all over my area Anybody grow one of these giant beauties? Anybody keep them indoors in winter?
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 03:18 |
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Ok Comboomer posted:so there’s colocasia bulbs for sale all over my area Mine get like 8’ tall in my yard if we don’t get a freeze in the winter and 6’ if we do. E: from a year or so ago when we didn’t get a hard freeze: No idea about growing them inside. They like it hot and wet and medium/bright shade outside. Caladiums are good for deeper shade. Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 13, 2021 |
# ? Apr 13, 2021 03:33 |
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They’re very fun plants especially the giant variety. We had them for years and years as the front garden backdrop until we got tired of them and gave all the bulbs away. LOVE water
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 03:37 |
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The flowers look like a giant whale dick or something
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 03:39 |
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Moss grows best on compacted, acidic soil, so if you have a lot of moss growing in an area, it’s a good sign that the soil is pretty compacted and relatively acidic. Whatever you do, work up the dirt a little to help with the compaction. If you go the azalea route, maybe avoid Encore azaleas. They do bloom year-round (... kinda) but the number of flowers you get with each bloom is way less than what you get from a normal azalea bush once a year in spring, and the bushes as a whole generally look pretty ratty in my experience. Also make sure to keep them trimmed to a nice shape and fertilize them every year once they’ve had a year or two to get established. A well-shaped azalea bush that’s properly fertilized puts out a whole fuckton of flowers and looks loving amazing when it’s in bloom in the spring, and it makes for a pretty handsome green bush the rest of the year. Azaleas are a pretty big deal where I live, so they’re a plant I actually know a little bit about. My town has an azalea festival every year at the beginning of spring when they’re in peak bloom; there’s a whole “Azalea District” where people open their bigass gardens to the public to check out all the flowers in bloom and it’s always a sight to behold (this year being the one exception due to Texas Snowpocalypse 2021). EDIT: Actually I’d like to elaborate a bit on the “normal” vs Encore azalea thing. Most regular azaleas have one spectacular blooming period in Spring, where (assuming it’s been properly fertilized) the entire bush is almost completely covered top-to-bottom in nothing but flowers for like 3 or 4 weeks or more, after which the blooms disappear and the plant goes into Handsome Green Shrub Mode for the rest of the year until Winter rolls around (and possibly well into that, depending on where you live). Some azaleas do an almost-equally-or-maybe-very-slightly-less-spectacular bloom in Spring, go into HGS Mode in Summer, and then have a second smaller bloom period in the Fall. I want to say that some azaleas’ leaves change color in the Fall but I need to double-check that. There are a few other regular varieties that bloom three times a year, once each season from Spring through Fall, but I don’t know as much about those as I don’t see them very often and haven’t read a whole lot about them. If I remember correctly they’re all mostly Shrub Mode year-round but with the addition of one somewhat-shorter blooming period each season consisting of fewer flowers per bloom than those other two types I described growing around all the leaves. However, while the three bloom periods on these varieties aren’t as amazing as the one or two on the other varieties, there are always enough flowers and leaves to fill out the whole bush so it at least looks full and handsome all the time. Encore azaleas are a different story. Rather than putting on one massive explosion of flowers in Spring and possibly another smaller explosion in Fall, or three even smaller explosions once per season on top of a nice dense leafy shrubby bush-cushion, Encores poo poo out multiple scanty little half-assed farts of flowers periodically all throughout the Spring, Summer, and Fall. So while you will get flowers all year round, you won’t get very many of them at any one time, and the ones you do get are gonna be scattered around randomly and look like poo poo. Also the Encore bushes I’ve seen grow leaves about the same way they grow flowers — i.e. they fart out a few lovely-looking ones periodically in random places throughout the bush — and they never seem to grow enough combined leaves and flowers at any given time to even fill out the whole bush so it looks like... y’know, an actual bush the way a normal azalea would. In other words, Encore azaleas look like patchy unhealthy poo poo all year long, all the time, forever, and fail both as flowering bushes and as leafy shrubs. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Apr 13, 2021 |
# ? Apr 13, 2021 05:35 |
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RickRogers posted:Tbh I hate lawn care as it is always an uphill struggle and sometimes the (literal) underlying cause is that the whole soil structure is terrible for grass. One of the best tips I learned about lawn care when I worked the garden section at a big-box home improvement store is that you must ALWAYS overseed your lawn once or twice a year. Like all of the other plants you put in your yard, your grass is not a native plant to the dirt it’s going on/in, meaning some of it is always gonna die off from year to year. In order to keep your lawn from gradually disappearing over time, you HAVE to lay down more grass seed periodically to replace whatever grass dies off that year/season. Doing this along with all the other regular maintenance stuff you gotta do will guarantee that you always have lush green grass covering your entire lawn, all year, every year, without parts of it slowly going bald like George Costanza. Unfortunately it’s been a number of years since I worked that job and I’ve forgotten bits and pieces of what I was taught, so you should double-check some of this with someone better-versed than I in lawn stuff, BUT if I recall correctly, the general idea is that you want to put out new seed every year in (I think) very early Fall and/or very late Winter/early Spring; exactly when and how many times you do it will depend on where you live and what kind of grass(es) you’re trying to grow. I want to say that if you’re only doing it once a year (which would mean that you’re planting an all-weather grass that can take both Summer and Winter weather), then the general rule is to do it in early Fall so it can establish a root system by Spring (much like a lot of other plants, such as my many fruit trees ), but again, you should probably confirm that with an expert, and if that expert isn’t a goon that posts in this thread then PLEASE POST WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU HERE, because I’d love to have my memory refreshed on the subject! Some grasses can only handle warm weather, and some are able to handle cold weather but don’t do as well in hotter temperatures. St. Augustine is an example of a grass that can’t handle cold at all, even in areas with mild winters like mine where the temperature normally only goes below freezing two or three times a year at most. In cases like this, you’ll want to seed twice a year instead of once, with a warm weather grass in late Winter/early Spring (pretty much as soon as your store of choice starts stocking the grass seed you want that year — I think in my area they usually start putting out the St. Augustine seed around mid-to-late February), and a cool weather grass in late Summer/early Fall. Also don’t forget to test your lawn dirt pH and nutrients and do pest control as needed! I think it’s usually recommended to start putting out your pest treatment awhile before you start seeding and fertilizing for whatever season, like a month or two ahead of time at least? Our front yard has grubs everywhere that keep eating and killing our grass and somehow we never seem to remember to apply our pest control stuff to kill the bastards when we’re actually supposed to. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Apr 13, 2021 |
# ? Apr 13, 2021 07:03 |
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Maintaining grass in shade is one thing. It’s establishing it that’s the challenge. There’s a landscaping thread in this forum that has a lot of experienced people in it, if you haven’t already asked there.
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 07:07 |
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By the way if any (or all) of the stuff I said in either of those last two posts is wrong then feel free to correct me. I’m hoping to plant some azaleas in our yard either later this year or early next year, and the less mistaken I am on what I think I know about them, the better. Same goes for fixing up our lawn. I really hope to God I didn’t gently caress up too many facts in those posts; I’m so loving sick and tired of seemingly always being wrong as gently caress about everything I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Apr 13, 2021 |
# ? Apr 13, 2021 09:22 |
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the fart question posted:
I love how goofy and out of scale a lot of cactus flowers are. Is it an Echinopsis or something else? I'm not good at flower morphology. I. M. Gei posted:If you go the azalea route, maybe avoid Encore azaleas. They do bloom year-round (... kinda) but the number of flowers you get with each bloom is way less than what you get from a normal azalea bush once a year in spring, and the bushes as a whole generally look pretty ratty in my experience. This has kind of been my experience with reblooming lilacs. Three lilac bushes are the only thing the previous owner put in that I didn't yank or at least move to an unused corner for being ugly poo poo, but two of them are rebloomers (I'm guessing Boomerang) and one of them isn't. I haven't seen foliage problems but the rebloomers don't put on nearly as much of a show. Wallet fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Apr 13, 2021 |
# ? Apr 13, 2021 13:31 |
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I. M. Gei posted:If you go the azalea route, maybe avoid Encore azaleas. They do bloom year-round (... kinda) but the number of flowers you get with each bloom is way less than what you get from a normal azalea bush once a year in spring, and the bushes as a whole generally look pretty ratty in my experience. one of the Lowe’s in my area has real-deal Satsukis, if you want azaleas that put out later/longer blooming flowers. I only know and care about azaleas from bonsai, but from what I understand, a lot of landscape azalea people will plant groups of American/mainland Asian/etc hybrids with satsukis, which are also smaller/more mounding/more delicate looking than most other varietals (so like clumps of satsuki in front and bigger, leggier azaleas in back) Then you get two pops of flowers- azalea hybrids in mid spring and satsukis a few weeks later.
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 13:45 |
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I. M. Gei posted:By the way if any (or all) of the stuff I said in either of those last two posts is wrong then feel free to correct me. I’m hoping to plant some azaleas in our yard either later this year or early next year, and the less mistaken I am on what I think I know about them, the better. Same goes for fixing up our lawn. Lol, yeah you are right about reseeding/overseeding. I do it after scarification for customers and it should work, but we often get sudden dry spells in Spring/Fall and then they don't water the newly sprouted seeds so it was all for nothing.
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# ? Apr 13, 2021 14:51 |
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Okay I talked to my neighbors about the tree situation and they’re cool with letting the tree cutters into their yard. So no worries there. We also got a written estimate from a tree guy and filed a claim with our insurance, although neither of them can get anyone out here to actually do anything until this Saturday. And insurance told us that we have to have the limb removed before they arrive so they can inspect the roof for damage (which sounds a bit fishy to me since I would think they’d need to see everything intact from the time it happened before checking for damages, but maybe that’s just me watching too many personal injury lawyer commercials).
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# ? Apr 14, 2021 06:23 |
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They only care about getting the invoice from the tree guy, his service cost doesn’t really matter to them as much as getting a good assessment of the roof damage
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# ? Apr 14, 2021 10:37 |
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Update: the tree limb is now officially gone! Our neighbors’ landlord (apparently the house is a rental) called a guy to take care of it and he came by today and removed everything all the way down to the trunk. As far as whether they’re gonna have someone assess the health of any of the other trees/branches in the yard, we don’t know. Although I wouldn’t be shocked if they did, considering this tree probably isn’t in the best health for a limb to have broken off of it as easily as that one did (the weather was totally calm when it happened and I don’t think there was any weight on there) and the only other big tree in that yard that’s near the fence has a ton of huge knots and burls and poo poo on it. I get the sense that this landlord is the type that gets real persnickety about anything that MIGHT hurt his property values or lead to any kind of legal trouble for him. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Apr 15, 2021 |
# ? Apr 15, 2021 04:22 |
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It and all the trees around it looked like water oaks and they are famously unhealthy. 25 years growing and the next 25 years slowly dying. E: The only good water oak is a dead water oak (or it’s very close relative the willow oak which seems to be an altogether superior tree). They’re the king of trash trees in the SE. Water oaks are probably the fastest growing oak in the world and if they didn’t die so fast and have so many flaws and hollow out they could be an incredible timber tree. I cut two out of my (admittedly prime bottomland) yard that were 15” DBh and 22 years old. I thought they were 50 before they cut them. Growth rings more than an inch apart some years, and easily 50’ tall. They are great firewood/woodlot trees and I have wondered if they could be coppiced or something. My other genius idea recently was to turn privet into English hedgerows. I have no idea the Southeast needs hedgerows, but I think privet would be great for it, with water oaks and green ash growing up in between. Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Apr 15, 2021 |
# ? Apr 15, 2021 04:29 |
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:It and all the trees around it looked like water oaks and they are famously unhealthy. 25 years growing and the next 25 years slowly dying. Funny you say this! We had a water oak pop up out of nowhere in our front yard a few years ago, practically in the same exact spot as an earlier (different kind of) oak tree that we had to cut down awhile before that. My dad, being a “live-and-let-live” semi-hippie type of guy, didn’t want to cut the water oak down because he had wanted to put a new oak tree in that spot anyway, and with this one magically appearing there on it’s own, he considered it to be — and I’m quoting him directly here — a “little gift from God” (he’s pretty religious like that, although thankfully not in a bad conservative way). Now, I say all of that in the past tense because, while the tree is still standing there in that spot at the moment, it is no longer alive. That’s because the huge winter storm we got back in February that murdered our state’s power and water grids also killed a whole shitload of plants, including this particular tree. You can tell it’s dead because all of the leaves on it are shrivelled up and death-brown, instead of growing and bright vibrant green like oak leaves are supposed to be at this time of year. I have a chainsaw big enough to cut it down, but it’s right near a power line and too tall for someone to cut down safely and gradually without either a tall A-frame ladder or a boxlift. Both of those things mean that we need to hire a pro to take care of it, although the power line is along the street and not connected to our house which makes me wonder if maybe the city might handle it for us EDIT: Actually that same storm killed several other plants of ours too, including a gardenia bush, two camellia bushes (about half of one of which is still desperately clinging to life), pretty much all of our existing azalea bushes (none of which were ever doing that well to begin with, partly because no one ever took care of them and partly because they’re all Encores, because we bought them back before we knew better), and — perhaps most notably — the very hedge bushes and ground-cover jasmine in our front yard that I’ve been wanting to dig up and replace with the GOOD KIND of azalea bushes for like 2 years now. Except this time WE’RE GONNA GROW ‘EM RIGHT (I also want to put in a couple of flowering cherry trees and possibly a flowering peach, along with several varieties of roses, a few crepe myrtles along the border between our house and our neighbors above us, and a whole bunch of tulips and hyacinths and poo poo) I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Apr 15, 2021 |
# ? Apr 15, 2021 07:46 |
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https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/1381539861782405127 smh at Florida just giving up on this.
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# ? Apr 15, 2021 08:07 |
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Speaking of azaleas, my native deciduous one had a single big rear end flower bud that I’ve been waiting for all spring to open . Well I finally went out to see wtf was taking so long; low and behold, some fuckin caterpillar had made a nest in it and ate the drat thing lol
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# ? Apr 15, 2021 11:17 |
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:It and all the trees around it looked like water oaks and they are famously unhealthy. 25 years growing and the next 25 years slowly dying. Privet is specifically grown as a hedge. That's what it's for lol
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# ? Apr 15, 2021 13:56 |
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Privet is specifically grown as a hedge. That's what it's for lol I think he is specifically refering to the building/planting of a hedgerow, which is a little different from a hedge and not suitable for all hedging plants, lol.
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# ? Apr 15, 2021 18:23 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 14:15 |
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Here are what the old hedgerows around where I grew up are like. They are pretty crazy and very good for wildlife. They also have a load of wildflowers in them.
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# ? Apr 15, 2021 18:27 |