Cimorene (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cimorene) wrote2025-10-06 03:47 pm
cimorene) wrote2025-10-06 03:47 pm
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New baby bushes
For long-time readers following along at home, you will likely remember our year-long struggle with the open septic tanks in the yard and the conclusion a couple weeks ago when the plumbers (and the digger) finally fixed it! Unfortunately, in the process, as well as digging up a bunch of grass and the gravel of our driveway, they had to dig up
So we bought some clover seed to put where the grass used to be (hoping the headstart will help it outcompete the grass - we hate grass) (it won't grow until next spring though) and where the cement square was. We can't hope to repair the steps until spring thaw because it's too cold to be sure of being able to cure concrete already. And we also bought some baby bushes to replace our lost bushes.
One of the bushes is the extremely common native shrub dasiphora fruticosa, or shrubby cinquefoil (Swedish: Ölandstok, Finnish: pensashanhikki), the Creme Brulee cultivar, which is white. The yellow-flowered one is what you see everywhere, so this will be a little different. In the center are two spiraea betulifolias, birchleaf spireas (björkspirea, koivuangervo), a variety whose leaves turn red early in summer after it finishes blooming. And the last one next to the driveway is forsythia x intermedia Courtalyn, or border forsythia Courtalyn (forsythia, I guess? in Swedish, and komeaonnenpensas in Finnish), which will have yellow flowers. However, now we have to get one or more stakes to put around them to protect them from the snowplows. The old bushes were big enough to warn the plows off, but these guys probably not so much. And they're near the corner of the lot and the street corner at a T intersection which is a big danger zone for snow plows because of the way the street widens a bit at the corners there.
- The horizontal cement square at the base of the cement steps to our door connecting them to the cement steps a couple yards in front of them that led up the retaining-wall hill to the higher level of the yard. Why did they build these two steps with a little square of cement between them? Nobody knows. But because it was connected to both sets of steps, and it had to be dug up, the bottom step of each set of steps is now all crumbled and broken with rebar sticking out and the step down to the ground is now too great. I guess we're gonna get some bricks???
- A row of established bushes marking the edge of the yard on the right of the driveway as you turn in. The broken pipe went under it. So we lost all of them. They were kind of straggly and unhappy anyway and we have tried several times to cut them back and fertilize them, to no avail.
- A lot of the roots of the beautiful birch tree on the corner of the lot, planted by the wife of the builder of the house, so probably sometime around 1950. The city workers who dug up and repaved the street 1 year ago unfortunately cut right up to the base of the trunk at the corner, so it lost a bunch of roots then, and this new excavation went almost as close, but from about 120° off. Two different old people in the neighborhood stopped on their walks to tell us "Hey, that tree's gonna die." Which seems plausible based on how much of its roots it must've lost, but it will be really sad and we are at least SLIGHTLY hoping that maybe it won't? Wax wants to wait and see how it feels next spring before we consider calling an arborist. I looked at the city website, but there is no number for the people in charge of trees (it is on city land since they own the margin next to the road) or any contact information about trees, so I suppose there isn't a municipal "Is This Tree a Danger" number.
You can see the tree on the edge there and all the bare earth where the excavation was...
RIP hideous but previously functional bottom steps :(
So we bought some clover seed to put where the grass used to be (hoping the headstart will help it outcompete the grass - we hate grass) (it won't grow until next spring though) and where the cement square was. We can't hope to repair the steps until spring thaw because it's too cold to be sure of being able to cure concrete already. And we also bought some baby bushes to replace our lost bushes.
One of the bushes is the extremely common native shrub dasiphora fruticosa, or shrubby cinquefoil (Swedish: Ölandstok, Finnish: pensashanhikki), the Creme Brulee cultivar, which is white. The yellow-flowered one is what you see everywhere, so this will be a little different. In the center are two spiraea betulifolias, birchleaf spireas (björkspirea, koivuangervo), a variety whose leaves turn red early in summer after it finishes blooming. And the last one next to the driveway is forsythia x intermedia Courtalyn, or border forsythia Courtalyn (forsythia, I guess? in Swedish, and komeaonnenpensas in Finnish), which will have yellow flowers. However, now we have to get one or more stakes to put around them to protect them from the snowplows. The old bushes were big enough to warn the plows off, but these guys probably not so much. And they're near the corner of the lot and the street corner at a T intersection which is a big danger zone for snow plows because of the way the street widens a bit at the corners there.
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