Category: Tumblr crossposts

readasaur:

So why were you guys moving the tree?

shadesofmauve:

Wait… doesn’t everyone re-arrange their trees when they get bored? I got tired of looking at that side.

For real, though: the city wouldn’t approve the permit for me to change my garage into an art studio unless I replaced the parking I was losing. No one would’ve parked in my garage because it was too small and –I don’t own a car–, but that’s the way the law is written, so I could either try to fight a change through city council and delay six months and maybe lose, or I could add a driveway. That I didn’t want. For a car I don’t have.

SO. I met with the city manager and city planner and talked it out and decided on a “driveway” which meets the legal requirements but looks like a patio – pavers instead of cement, turning a right angle off the current driveway and coming in front of the living room. It’s actually a pretty cool idea, because the living room has always been really dark and the house uninviting, so opening it up there would make for a cooler yard.

Only there was this rhododendron in the way.

And I’d be damned if I was going to cut it down just to make room for the driveway I don’t want for the car I don’t have. So. The rhody got to see ten feet more of the world than most large shrubs/small trees ever see!

(Incidentally, it also – entirely on accident – did an almost full 180, so I’m actually looking at a different view of it than I did a week ago, lol).

Back when we were prepping to move to Bristol, my mum was near simultaneously moving to Cornwall – and her allotment (council provided gardening land) was up for grabs. The person who took it, who is clearly evil, said they were going to rip out the fruit trees she’d planted (amazing apple trees) and turn the whole lot over to flower production (it was an amazing source of fruit and veg, my mum had cleared it from being just brambles).

She had no-where to put another tree, so she said to Kathryn and I, go take what you can. We turned up with our Volvo 340 hatchback, loaded it with some smaller plants, and then set to and managed to dig up one of the, 7 year old apple trees. Eventually (as darkness fell) we got it loaded into the trunk of the car. Well, kinda trunk and roots in the car. Squished it down a bit, and pulled the bootlid down with a rope, then drove the 60 miles down the motorway home.

It lived in the biggest pot we could find for about 6 months, then got planted in the garden in Bristol. Took about a year, but it started producing loads of apples… :)

One should always save the trees :)

rahksin:

Hey, ignore me if you’ve answered this already, but where did your interest in plant life and gardening come from? I am forever marveling at all this practical knowledge that I was never introduced to as a kid.

tkingfisher:

Oh wow, that’s a good question! My mother was a gardener, and I think it was from her that I got the desire to grow things, but I didn’t get much practical knowledge. (Not her fault, I was just young and dumb and also things that grow in Oregon are not always things that grow in Minnesota or North Carolina. I did learn how to build a drystone wall from my stepfather, though, which is surprisingly useful knowledge, because it teaches you that stacking a bunch of rocks can fix all kinds of things.)

No, I got all the actual knowledge from books and sticking my hands into dirt. Mostly books. I knew nothing when I started. I kept ordering mulch from one place and they gave me Black Kow compost instead, because the clerk didn’t know anything either. So I spread like three hundred pounds of cow manure on my flower beds and then wondered why the weeds grew, but oh my god, the plants exploded.

And I also did a lot of things that were stupid, some of which worked great. For example, nobody told me you couldn’t build a garden bed by marking out a chunk of lawn and dumping dirt over it, until after the fact, when they said the grass would grow through. Those beds did awesome. Still do. Mind you, I used a LOT of dirt. (If I were doing it again, I might try flipping the sod, but at the time, I just got in and dumped dirt and smothered everything.) 

I had no idea how big anything got, so I’d plant it and find out. In some cases, that means that I’m still dealing with having Rattlesnake Master at the front of a bed and having to stake it, and I’ve moved (and slain) plants that got out of hand.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that gardening is often a blood-borne pathogen, but practical knowledge can be gleaned by reading and doing and failing and trying again.

tinierpurplefishes:

I’m not a procrastinator. I’m not good enough at it to get paid. Just an amateurcrastinator.