disobedient documentation

This tree has grown THRU the fence. . .

defiant tree

longer view

stumps of hope

Every year except this one, these little bastards have produced sprouts and branches. Last year we DRILLED them and induced stump dissolver (basically an accelerated fertilizer) to force their decay. They are included here as evidence of Past Disobedience.

The Great Defiant One

This was a much taller stump in 2007, before we cut it down to here with a chainsaw and started the process of trying to break it down. . .

close up

. . . in case you're wondering, that rusty looking thing is a DRILL BIT that's about 16 inches long. Burn Unit was drilling holes in the stump (you can see some of them) last summer to get the dissolution process started. However the stump SEIZED the bit and we've been unable to extract it. THAT'S some *disobedience*

spring!

Look! Ivy growing up around the stump, nature disobeying our desire to control one area by raising high her sweet green tendrils. There's a distinct possibility the little green sprout you can see on top of the stump is COMING FROM THE STUMP.

maybe this year

This was taken in April. These are the shrubs and trees that grew up around our garage the last three years. Last year I cut off the slender branches down to the stumps and they grew those back anyway, plus I sprayed them. This defoliated the branches, but did it kill the shrubs?

nope.

this was taken May 20, 2008

The front of the garage

Same treatment as the side snip snip, spray spray...

Grow. Grow.

layered disobedience

This is just frustrating. That's snow. This is a photo from April. Also notable is all the crazy crap growing into and through the fenceline. These bushes need serious trimming, or realistically are probably going to have to come out of there.

more disobedient trees

That's technically the neighbor's fence and therefore it's tree (I say "it" because the neighbor house is owned by a BANK and is an UNINHABITED EYESORE)

spring has sprung

here's what all those defiant shrubs look like as they posture and strut their disobedience to my prior years' attempts at trimming them back. Also disobeying winter's attempt to kill them (nature disobeying itself doesn't really count).

Lift Your Silver Maple Limbs Like Antennas To Heaven

This enormous silver maple lives in our front yard. It overhangs the house--we trimmed it pretty big in 2005--occasionally LARGE LIMBS GET BLOWN OFF and crash into our yard or the neighboring yard.

Example

Here's some evidence of the big limb damage that enormous tree has taken just in the last couple years. The broken branch on the left dropped a HUGE pile of brush and wreckage into the abandoned yard next door last summer.

a minor disobedience

See that silt? That silt collects because of LOUSY DRAINAGE after winter, and a mud puddle sits there throughout winter and spring every year, often making our access to and from the car parked at the curb messy or perilous or both.

Must clean gutters

See those little gutters? Fact that non-homeowners might not know: your gutters, way up on the roof, are actually there to keep water out of your Basement.

they don't help in this case.

rain garden

BlueTulip installed a rain garden a couple years back. It's supposed to aid the gutters in keeping water out of the basement whilst also out of the storm sewer system, helping out the city while it helps us.

it's.

not.

helping.

yet.

dammit.

here's evidence

of a place where water comes down to our foundation unabated...

so's this

water defies your silly human cements and concretes!

estimating future taming

This is an estimate of what it might take to tame a certain portion of nature this year. If we want to improve the positive drainage away from the foundation and get rid of the last of those stumps, it'll cost over $1000. (if we want to add that patio we've been talking about between the house and the tree in the next picture, it'll add an additional $3000)

base of a tree

That big leafy thing is, I think, a cousin to burdock, which I pulled up last year. The grass you can see at the front right of that tree is grass I have NO IDEA where it came from because it's huge, tall, and ARROW STRAIGHT. There's SUPPOSED to be some flowers growing around this thing. There's a couple, over in the back right corner. (1) those were annuals, I thought. 2) They were PURPLE in 2007)

see that plant at left?

the one between those neighboring sheds? I trimmed and herbicided the CRAP out of that bastard in 2007. This year I'm skipping the poisons. What's the use? It just potentially exposes the groundwater to contamination, even when I use organically derived compounds. Ms. Disobedience of All Years doesn't appear to give a crap anyway.

this was all trimmed in 2007

That green tree is supposed to be dead right now.