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Abundant sunshine. High 78F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..
A few passing clouds. Low 52F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
Kristin Emery is a meteorologist at KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, an O-R columnist, and writer for Total Health magazine and other publications. Kristin is a Washington native and a graduate of Washington High School and West Virginia University.
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When I was a little kid, our house had a porch on the side and a nice bit of yard next to that with a big tree. My dad built an awesome playhouse for us on stilts beside it with a sandbox below. As we got older, the porch was enclosed and became a family room, and the stilt house was torn down to make way for a new porch. Just beside the new porch, my dad planted a majestic tree that stood for decades. When he decided to enclose the newer porch into a sunroom as his retirement project, he also added a patio and storage shed. The patio was beautifully paved with small, red interlocking bricks around the tree. Eventually, the tree grew to be way too big, and we worried that a strong storm could bring it crashing down onto the roof. So, the tree had to go, and a nice crew of tree experts came and dug and cut and chopped until it was almost gone.
The one remaining piece of that tree was the stump lurking just below the dirt. It was covered with soil and grass and eventually rotted away to leave a nice little green patch of lawn. Farewell, large tree ... or so I thought!
Fast forward about 20 years and the rotting stump had gradually led to a bumper crop of mushrooms growing on that tuft of lawn. The pavers were a bit worse for the wear but were hanging in there except for the fact that they were gradually spreading apart, leaving sand and dirt in the spaces between them. Those spaces became my nemesis each of the last five summers with an array of weeds like you’ve never seen sprouting up over and over again. I’d pull or spray one batch only to have another variety appear the next week. It was exhausting. The final straw came when the pavers began to lift and crack thanks to – you guessed it t– he leftover root system from our beloved old tree.
We just had the pavers ripped out and a brand-new concrete patio poured, which looks gorgeous. The crew wound up digging about three feet down to pull out the tree’s root ball! I was left with a semi-circle shaped flower bed and decided to plant a couple hydrangeas and hostas. That sounds easier than it was since I immediately hit a four-inch-wide tree root with my first shovel of dirt. After hacking my way through the planting with an axe and shovel, I was so sore I couldn’t stand up straight. Finally, though, the shrubs and hostas are in place and I’m hoping any leftover pieces of tree root won’t cause problems since it’s not attached to anything. A few more bags of topsoil and some mulch and the patio project will be done and, no, I’m not planting any more trees!
Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.
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