Very simple testament to the power of mulch for your plants:
Tree on the left has no mulch under it. It even sits in a low spot in the yard where all the rain runoff travels. Tree on the right I blew all the grass clippings under with the lawnmower a couple months ago, so it has a nice, thick layer of mulch under it.
In our part of Missouri, we’ve had little to no rain for over a month and a half now. My neighbor’s oaks were showing signs of oak wilt when we moved in here a year ago, now they’re disappearing like seedlings in a rabbit’s garden buffet. Half the trees in our neighborhood are dropping leaves and going dormant. It looks like November on the ground already. The dogs send puffs of dust flying every time they run. Our water bill that normally runs $30 a month was $142 last month. I wouldn’t even want to see the neighbor up the hill- who have the only green yard in our subdivision and run their impact sprinklers at least 10 hours a day from dawn to dusk every single day.
The only real blessing is I haven’t had to listen to lawn mowers all around us every weekend… but it’s been replaced by the sound of chainsaws cutting down dying trees and clouds of dust from stump grinding. I think I preferred the lawn mowers. 😦
So anyway, moral of this story is, MULCH YOUR PLANTS. If you can’t deal with the messy way it looks, then put landscaping around them, like the plastic yard dividers, landscaping bricks, rock, etc. and put the mulch inside that contained area. But mulch your plants. It doesn’t just conserve water. It keeps the roots cooler in the heat, it protects the plant from the brutality of the sun beating down on it. It keeps the soil from compacting and allows air exchange and microorganisms to enrich your soil. It attracts earthworms and it breaks down over time, building topsoil, creating nutrients and feeding your plants. It keeps the weeds down. (Anything that cuts down on my weed eating time is a good thing!)
My neighbor hates mulch. He wrinkled his nose at me last fall when he came over and asked me if I’d like him to vacuum up all the weeds and grass clippings- and I told him, “No thanks, I’ll chop them up and use them for mulch.” I was dumping bags of them around my trees when he stopped by. His granddaughter said, “What’s mulch?” He pointed to what I was doing and said, “That.” He was absolutely disgusted. He mows and uses Round Up at the base of all his trees to make nice, neat little clean rings under them with no weeds. He wants his yard to look like a city park.
His trees are the ones being cut down now because they’re dying.
So we are on the move again. We will be moving to a rental in Rolla for a couple of years, so I’m busy packing again. It does have a yard, but since it will not be an “owned” yard, I’ll likely be limited to pot garden for the duration of the time that we’re there. So my current focus is on harvesting the last bits of this year’s garden and packing, packing, packing.
I spotted this beauty while watering a couple days ago:
The drought here has devastated everyone’s yard and most of the trees are going dormant/dropping leaves already. Our neighbor lost multiple oaks that had started to succumb to oak wilt earlier in the summer; the drought just finished them off faster. The other neighbor’s sprinklers run 24/7 it seems. I’d hate to see their water bill! Ours is usually only about $30 a month, this past month it was $142!!! And I don’t even water the yard, just the outside plants and the garden. It hasn’t really rained at all though since early July. We’ve even had to start picking and choosing where we go to get in the river, the places where the water doesn’t run heavily are getting stagnant and full of massive amounts of algae bloom. Perfect conditions for nasty stuff to be growing in it.
Danny has been canning a few of our last cucumbers, making dill and bread and butter pickles. The tomatoes are still trickling in. The one good thing about a drought is I haven’t had to mow in a month. I’d just be moving dust around if I did!
In other news, the new house only allows so many pets. We’ve been lucky in that we had the space to keep all of our animals to this point, but now we need to rehome kitties. If you or someone you know has a barn or outbuilding in need of a mouser, please send me or Danny a PM on Facebook ASAP. The shelters are so full that they have an intake freeze on cats and a very long waiting list for dogs.
The tortoiseshell kitty is Daisy Mae. She’s not a super social cat with people, but gets along with dogs and tolerates other cats. She is an excellent mouser and would love a space in a barn where she can just hole up, do her thing and hunt. She’s been a garage cat most of the time we’ve had her. She’s about 10 years old. She’s been spayed. The goofy boy in the tuxedo on the right is Steve. He’s been cooped up in a house for a year and HATES it. He was originally an outside kitty and loves to hunt mice and voles. He would MUCH prefer to be outside. He will come for pets on occasion and my daughter can hold him, but he’s very much about the hunt and go go go. Not sure on his age, he got dumped off at our barn when we lived on the farm. He has been neutered.
Please share these guys with your friends and family if they have a space for them! My daughter loves these cats and would like to know that they have a place to go where they can be happy and safe. I’ll share this post on Dirt’s Facebook page, you can send me a PM there if you’re interested.
Ok, time to get pack to packing. We’ll be shaking off some dust soon!
We got a late start, but we’re finally starting to see a few things from our garden. 😁
Not much else going on. Summer school is on right now, so I’ve been working. It’s been 108 heat index all this week, so time in the garden is pretty much water and run back inside.
I’m hoping for some river time during the last of break.
Sigh… Ok, I know it’s been months again since I’ve made a post, but I haven’t really had much TO post about. Work, hang out with my husband and kid- wash, rinse, repeat. Plus, as most of you know, I moved last August to Suburbia and left the orchard and garden I’d put seven years into behind with my ex husband. It’s ok. I’m not feeling sorry for myself and I don’t regret that decision AT ALL. Not one miniscule little bit. It was a lot of work, I had little to no help and even though I had all that space, land and time, it wasn’t fun anymore.
Danny bought us a gorgeous house with a massive yard last August. The only caveat is, it’s in the middle of a suburban neighborhood- something I haven’t lived in since I was in my early twenties and didn’t care that my “yard” basically amounted to a square of dirt under the windows of our apartment, which was taken care of by the landlord and surrounded by a half acre of concrete. It was close to the hospital where I worked. I had pizza takeout and a ready access to all the Diet Dr Pepper I wanted. I had house plants. I was good with that.
But we moved here and I missed my garden. The ground here sucks. It reminds me very much of the ‘soil’ at our house at Lake of the Ozarks. Clay with layers of rock, more clay, more rock and it’s either dried out concrete texture or sticky muck that roots drown and suffocate in. So we decided if we’re having a garden here, it will need to be like it was there: raised beds that sit on the hard, crappy ground instead of spending hours upon hours amending the soil IN it.
Our deck needed to be replaced and we had a bunch of leftover lumber that needed a purpose, so Danny built me boxes. ALL THE WAY around the patio. And this is a HUGE patio. Each one of these boxes is about 10 feet long, over a foot wide and about two feet deep… and he built four of them! So I now have more garden space than I’m sure I know what to do with. Ok, to be fair we did manage to fill every single box with plants, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I have a massive garden. And my husband is a freaking rock star who goes out of his way to make me happy.
He built all of this over a couple weekend’s time. The bottom of the boxes are lined with cardboard (leftover from our move), topped with brush, sticks, yard clippings and leaves. The other neighbors burn every leaf and cut blade of grass that falls on their lawn. I probably drive them batshit crazy.
He added posts and trellis and took me plant shopping. HE TOOK ME PLANT SHOPPING!!! I made a joke about needing to buy 87 plants and he just shrugged and told me whatever made me happy.
See? I told you. Freaking rock star.
So we planted all of this and then had to go back out and put some of the seeds back in the ground after the neighborhood band of marauding squirrels decided they wanted to play in the dirt and dig up a bunch of the plants. I’m threatening to purchase a slingshot, but haven’t yet, so Danny put electric fence around it. So far, the plants have been left alone for the most part and our dog has only been dumb enough to put her nose on it twice. >.<
I have tomatoes, okra, several kinds of beans, several kinds of cucumber, squash, zucchini, sunflowers. I haven’t the first inkling how to cook squash, zucchini or okra, but Danny assures me that he can and he will show me. I’m just over the moon that I have a big garden to fuss over again. And it’s right out the back door. Talk about convenience! And doubles as a privacy screen from the neighbors. We plan on rebuilding the deck soon, but until we do, I will have a nice little spot to sit behind my plants.
My daughter also got me a wisteria for Mother’s Day. A plant I had at the Lake but was forbidden by my ex to have at the farm. She told Danny she was buying me a wisteria… he said, “Good, she’ll love that.” 🙂 Told you. Spoils me. Not sure how he’s going to feel about modeling for Dirt. We’ll see? Better to ask forgiveness than permission? 😉
I’ll keep you updated on how all this turns out. I’ve never had to garden while paying a water bill before, we had well water both at the lake and the farm. I did at least build layers into these beds, so they should hold water well, especially as they break down over time.
Who else is tired of reading about drama with my ex and would like me to get back to writing about important stuff about nature and yards and what I’m doing in the garden this spring?
Gods me too.
So I’m now engaged, planning a wedding and already making plans for what to do with our back patio this spring. I wasn’t prepared for living in a subdivision. My neighbors seem to hate nature. In fact, our next door neighbor came over this weekend, after watching me outside with our mulching mower for half an hour and offered to pick up our leaves with his giant leaf vacuum. He’s gone around to practically every yard in the neighborhood and picked up all their leaves and he diligently picks his up several times a week so that they do not mar his perfect landscape of Bermuda grass. The other neighbors have all fallen in line, blowing away with their blowers and burning, burning, burning. Even when there were burn bans and 20 mph winds. Can’t have those leaves lying around on our perfect grass. Not acceptable.
So like I said, our neighbor with the leaf vacuum comes over and offers to do our yard too, I’m sure he saw me FINALLY outside with my little mulching mower and wondered wtf I was doing. To him, it must have looked the equivalent of trying to vacuum an entire house with a Dust Buster. So he came over on his four wheeler with his granddaughter and offered to get rid of our leaves. I could tell by the disappointment on his face when I said, “No thanks, I’m using the leaves for mulch. My apple trees will love it,” that this was not the response he’d expected to hear at all. His granddaughter asked what mulch was. He told her, but explained mulch like it was something nasty our dogs might leave lying around the yard for us to step in.
I’m likely the pariah of the neighborhood now. I’ll be that “weird hippie that doesn’t clean up her leaves” from now until we move. I’m ok with that.
I’ve been breathing smoke from every yard around us for WEEKS. I’m allergic to it. So this means my lungs decide they don’t want to function every time one of our neighbors declares war on their yard. I can’t for the life of me understand what the purpose is of having a pristine, perfect yard that you never actually go out and spend any time in… except to do maintenance and then go back inside. These people don’t seem to enjoy their efforts at all. Tonight, NOBODY in this neighborhood is enjoying their yard. You can’t breathe for the smoke again… and not just me- it’s so thick I can hardly see the lights in my neighbor’s yard 50 feet away from the smoke hanging in the air. I thought I’d escaped this when I left the country, where all of our neighbors at the farm seemed to hate trees and burned wood year round for one reason or another.
Can you tell where my yard ends? Now I will, eventually, pick up a lot of those leaves with the mulching mower, chop them up and re-deposit them around my trees, shrubs keep some for the garden in the the spring. But I’m not in the least concerned with having a leafless, clean yard of perfect grass. So many of the yards in the subdivision are a mono-culture of Bermuda grass or something similar. It’s thick and doesn’t allow for much of anything else to grow through it. My lawn has never been this. I’ve always had a mix of clovers, several grasses and wildflowers in my yard. I love dandelions, though they tend to only grow in crappy soil, so I haven’t had them in our yard for many years. I love a yard full of clover and spring violets, henbit and nettle. It’s colorful, the bees and butterflies love it. We always had an abundance of rabbits to watch with all the clover at the farm. Lots of squirrels here, raiding the bird feeders people put out, but not much else.
And I haven’t seen a single firefly since we’ve been here. Not one.
I’ve always thought fireflies were magical. There are tourist destinations in the Carolinas where people travel across the US, just to go look at fireflies. I’ve read in their testimonials that some of them had never seen one before. Suburbia is one of the biggest threats to firefly habitat loss. Artificial lighting, while beautiful to look at, messes with their communication signals. All those manicured, leafless lawns leave them no place to lay their eggs and if they’ve already laid their eggs in the leaves… well, they are about to get swept up and burned in massive, stinking piles. Old hay fields near creeks were some of the best places to see them. I remember being enchanted by the rivers in the dark as a teenager- sneaking down to do a little fishing at night, millions of tiny, twinkling lights guiding us along the way… Pesticide use, brush hogging and burning have really cut back on their habitat. I miss the fireflies.
We have a salamander living in our water meter here. They love wet leaves, but there are none in any yard around us. No place to hide, no place to hunt for worms or insects.
This stuff, in your garden, is a wonder-maker. I added broken down leaves to every single raised bed I’ve ever built. If I could gather them from the woods and get the stuff like above that was broken down over several seasons, even better. Leaves are great mulch. They protect soil from winter rain and smother weeds in summer. As they break down, they lighten heavy soils and improve water conservation in soils that are too sandy. They offer loads of nutrients, even in store bought potting soil. Leaf mold supports predatory insects, which help control other pests in your garden while it’s growing. Leaves also serve as habitat for lizards, birds, turtles, frogs and other overwintering insects. We have a SERIOUS mosquito problem in this neighborhood in the summer, thanks to a big retaining pond a couple houses from ours. We need every bird, frog, reptile, predatory insect and bat here we can get!
The soil in our yard (And I suspect most of the neighbor’s yards as well) is so compacted from years of no leaves, thick mono-culture grass and sterile landscaping that when our area recently got a huge amount of rain in a 24 hour period, the ground wasn’t able to absorb it all. Instead, it came up in basements and flooded the drainage ditches and creeks around us. Landscaping against nature instead of with it effects everything- water absorption, plant health, animal habitat.. and makes a HUGE difference in diversity of plant and animal species which can in turn have a huge effect on certain types of insect infestations (think more mosquitos, Japanese beetles) and fungal infections (things like oak wilt, powdery mildew and blight). I have two years to make a difference here. In that two years I’ll probably drive our neighbors absolutely batshit, but maybe in the end they’ll see a difference and try some of my crazy ideas too. I hope they’ll embrace the bat houses and bird houses and maybe… just maybe a few of the leaves.
If nothing else, at least take the time to jump in those piles before they burn them off and enjoy those yards they’re out there working so hard to keep pretty. 🙂
So it’s over finally. As of September 20th, 2024, I’m officially divorced from Tom.
It’s been a rough year and a half and a I know some of you have wondered where I’ve been. I’ve also had a lot of friends and family ask “What happened?” or some variation of that, like “I thought you guys were happy?” But that’s the thing isn’t it? Happiness online is such an illusion. On social media you only see the very best of people. It’s often the same out in social situations in a group. During 4H we’d put on our best happy faces and put any ugly or awkward aside for a couple hours. Do the people that don’t live with you EVER really get to know you as well as those that do? I don’t think so…
They asked Tom on the stand why we split up. He said, “I don’t know. It was a shock. I thought we were good. I thought we were happy. It was just all so sudden…”
I’m telling you. It wasn’t.
I remember distinctly twice in the 6 months before our split telling him, “If things don’t change, we aren’t going to make it.” I don’t know how much plainer language you can have than that. I remember when Ely started talking about going to college, me musing out loud more than once, “If we ever get divorced, maybe I’ll just go with Ely or live by the ocean somewhere.” Ladies and Gents, if your spouse starts musing out loud about what life would look like without you and has never done this before… you might want to sit up and pay attention. Fast.
When they asked me on the stand, all I could think to say was, “I was tired of feeling like an appliance. All he did was work and then sit in his chair and not help me.” This was a crap answer, because I suck at responding to things like that on the fly. What I should have told them was this:
It wasn’t any one big thing. It was death by a thousand tiny cuts. Yes we had some really rough big moments- he cheated on me right after I miscarried, which eventually that same year led to me cheating on him to get revenge. We managed to hold it together through that and surgeries and having to borrow money to eat that week… through both of us going to college and working and running a business together. There was a lot.
Now the song goes like this:
” So I ain’t gonna go and tell you what he did But I’ll tell you what he didn’t do Treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word Stay home ’cause he wanted to Always fight for my love, hold on tight like it’s something That he couldn’t stand to lose The devil’s in the details, I won’t tell the hell that he put me through All I know is in the end, it wasn’t what he did No, it was what he didn’t do”
What I should have told them in court was, I was fading away. I was drowning in slow sinking quicksand and he didn’t reach for my hand or even notice. I felt abandoned. I felt taken for granted. I felt invisible.
And I was angry that through all of my being lonely and drowning and hurting and miserable he didn’t notice. Because he was watching TikTok. Or Fox News. Or Discovery. Or sleeping in the chair. Or working and telling us to be quiet for the One-Millionth time because he had a meeting… or… or… or…
When you’re hurting, you look for things to be more hurt about. Everything that person does becomes a slight or an insult, whether they meant it that way or not. And then when things sit for years and you don’t talk about them, it just becomes impossible to talk about. Like when you can’t remember someone’s name at a party- and you don’t ask within those first few minutes… then you go half the night and it would just be ridiculous to ask. So you never ask. And you never know. And then it’s lost forever.
But, I didn’t have time to say all of this on the stand. So I just said what came to mind first, which was basically that stupid old joke about “Why does the bride wear white?”
“So she can match all the other appliances.”
I was tired of feeling invisible. Like the refrigerator you don’t give a second thought unless it stops working. It was all that came to mind.
But I’m telling you. This was not sudden. It was not a rash decision. I landed myself in the hospital with all of this stress when Ely was in 3rd or 4th grade. Things went downhill very suddenly when we moved to St James. I didn’t have my friends and my volunteer job to distract me from my home life anymore. Which meant I really started to dwell on how shitty I felt and how it never changed and how I’d rather walk into the ocean and disappear forever if I had to endure another year, another month, another day…
Danny coming to the farm was just supposed to be for him to help me get caught up with all those little chores I was drowning in. Tom thought it was a good idea. Someone to help fix the broken tractor, get the garden in order, help me with all those little time-eating projects that I hadn’t managed to get to (and they were stacking up by the minute). We talked about how maybe Danny could come stay in the front house for the summer. We’d fix it up enough to make it livable. He wouldn’t have to deal with rent and such. We hadn’t seen Danny in about seven years. Tom reached out to him first…
Then I started talking to him. And then made plans to come get him.
And I didn’t tell Tom. Whether at first I meant things to go where they did, I really can’t tell you now. I just know that Danny held out his hand and I was drowning in quicksand. We’d always been so much alike. We were the ‘worker bees’ of our respective marriages. The partners that did all the stuff behind the scenes while someone else took the credit. The ones that raised the kids, did the garden, took care of the animals, cleaned the house, cooked the meals, did the shopping, the errands, the laundry… all that stuff that has to get done but doesn’t get celebrated and often not appreciated by anyone.
Now we appreciate each other. We give the respect we felt we were missing to each other. We take care of each other in a way that we took care of others, but never had for ourselves. And we are absolutely thriving in each other’s company.
I thought Danny was beautiful the first time he stepped out of his truck and Tom said, “This is my brother, Danny.” Those blue eyes… they’re damn near hypnotic. Especially when he’s staring down at me in the near-dark. 😉 He makes me laugh, he makes me cry too, but usually because he says really sweet, insightful things that take me by surprise. I love his smile and his laugh. I love the way he can pull me into his arms and all my tension just melts away. I love that we’ve watched each other grow and mature for 25 years into the people we are now. He makes me happy in ways I can’t even begin to describe. And I’ve never been so sure in my entire life of anyone. And we talk. About everything. And we’ve sworn to keep doing that with each other, so that it never goes too long or gets to awkward to talk about. We still cut each other sometimes, but we’re careful to tend the wounds after and not just let them bleed. I hope we have a long, long time to take care of and love each other.
So all of you that are wondering, “What the hell happened?” That’s the Cliff Note’s version for you. There’s a LOT of stuff in between, but it doesn’t matter now. I’m ready to put it behind me and get on with life now, especially since I feel like ours has been on hold for almost 2 years.
I’m not sure where the next several years will lead and and instead of dreading that, I find it really exciting.
Huge ugly argument with the ex this weekend over me digging up trees from the orchard.
Year before last, I planted a couple new apple trees in the orchard. They hadn’t really gotten much of a root system yet, which isn’t all that unusual for new trees. All plants tend to follow the sleep, creep, leap rule… the first year you put them in, they sleep. In fact, I’ve often checked things obsessively the first year, thinking they were dying or dead, only to find them just languishing in the dirt doing little.
Orchard, year 7
The 2nd year, plants creep. This is when I had to resist the urge to douse them in fertilizer to speed them up. They are still getting root systems and acclimating to climate, etc. So they just grow very S–l–o–w.
If they make it through until the 3rd year, this is when the stuff underground is relatively established and they should take off. My apples should have been in that stage, but thanks to 2 years in a row worth of horrible summer heat and drought, they were still just creeping along.
So I thought since they had little root system and hadn’t been in the ground long compared to the rest of the orchard, they’d be good candidates for potting up to take with us when we move. (Dear gods make it soon!)
All good cult leaders advertise
So we got them out, in the truck and were almost done when the ex comes by and throws an epic fit that I’m taking HIS trees out of HIS orchard and how dare I?
Long story short… there were a lot of words, a lot of threats and even some shoving on his part, which thankfully did not melt down into an all out brawl in our driveway. He told my daughter AT LEAST 5 times that Danny and me had poisoned her mind against him and that she was “Drinking the Kool Aid” because she wasn’t siding with him. So apparently, Danny and I are now cult leaders. So I put up a sign, just in case anyone else wants to join.
Join our cult! Only 5 cents!
What a bargain! Right?
This is why you don’t grief creative people. They make art of your bullshit.
On a brighter note, I took my little cultist and her dog walking this morning.
I’m SO ready for summer and to go get in the river. Kiddo is talking about getting a job next year, so this might be our last full summer off together.
Garden will probably be all in pots this year for portability. I’ll post on that when it’s underway. Until then.
Have some Kool Aide! And don’t let the bastards get you down.
I’m still stuck in what seems this Neverending Cycle of Shit called Getting Divorced.
And unfortunately, can’t say a whole lot about any of it, because if my ex can use it against me or ask his lawyers to file charges against me for it, he will.
Progress IS being made, albeit at the pace of a geriatric sloth on tranquilizers, but it IS being made. Some day I will emerge from the other side of this and return to my plant and dirt obsessions.
For now though, I just have my indoor jungle and a few things I dug up from the yard of the main house… in the middle of the night… like I was stealing my own shit.
I’m hoping to at least build a veggie bed this spring. Maybe I’ll get some pictures of that. I am working on one painting, but haven’t really made it a priority. I need to. Like I really need to. Encourage me to paint people. Demand that I paint. Tell me I must paint, the fate of all cute gooey furry things on the planet depends on it. I just really need a karmic kick in the ass to get me inspired again. All the stress and daily bullshit has really taken a toll on my creativity; which I need to fix, because that actually helps me deal with stress. 🙄
Anyway, daily current mood looks something like this:
And my brain often resembles this:
Between the two I’m just not getting much accomplished, other than reacting to the daily shit storm of life.
Hoping for a break in this very soon and I can move forward of my own volition again instead of just being drug along… under a bus… on spike strips.
Good advice ladies, if you ever decide it’s time to get divorced, save lots of $. Then put what you can in carry on bags, move to another country, leave no forwarding address and change your name. Life will be easier.
I am currently in the middle of a life shit-storm, otherwise known as a divorce and won’t be able to focus on blog or webstore for a while.
I plan on getting the shop back up and running, I’ll be adding some new inventory when I do, but it won’t be related to Cordes Farms any longer. This also means I won’t be living where I am living much longer. I’m not sure where I’ll be or what things are going to look like yet, so it’s hard to move forward with blog and store until I have some answers.
I will tell you all this though- I’m not sad about the direction things are going. I’m looking forward to the adventure.
And I’ll be back. Just need a bit of time to reinvent myself.
Those of you that aren’t yet convinced that Bradford Pears are evil, spreading little thorn covered demons, I want you to take a good look at the photo above.
That stump is what remains of the biggest Bradford Pear tree I think I’ve ever seen. Now I can’t blame Pa Paw for planting this beast, because when he planted it, people were told that Bradford’s were sterile and were the perfect ornamental tree for any home landscape. It wasn’t until 20-30 years later that they realized that this was, in fact, complete and utter BS.
Bradford pears do, in fact, bear fruit. They are not sterile as once believed. This means the birds eat them and spread them EVERYWHERE. Worse yet, the trees that sprout from that fruit are not true to their original form, but true to the root stock that the Bradford’s are grown on, which is the Chinese Callery Pear. Here the Midwest, the Callery Pear is considered an invasive plant. The photo above is what happens when you try to cut down a Bradford and can’t or don’t burn out every last bit of the stump and root system along with it. Unless I want to destroy a huge patch of Paw Pa’s Surprise Lilies and Day Lilies, I will be cutting down little Callery Pears that sprout off of this root system from hell for YEARS.
Did I mention the new trees have thorns? Thorns that are as big and sharp as those on Honey Locust (which we also have here). These lovely trees have been known to grow in thickets so dense and so covered in thorns that they will shred tractor tires or bulldozer treads of the machinery trying to clear them from unattended land.
So once again this year, I’ll be hunting them. If I see them in the woods or our fields, they are immediately cut down. I’ll cut all these sprouts off (AGAIN) this year, I’m hoping that eventually the root system will die out and they’ll stop coming up. I may be fooling myself with wishful thinking…
My other option is to dig up all the those lilies, find them a new spot and burn the ground deep enough to destroy the Bradford’s Spawn, then let it recover. I have considered this option.
Seriously folks, don’t plant these freaking trees. They look pretty and innocuous sitting at the nursery or garden center, but they are in fact, the Children of Hell. If you’d like a pretty white tree to plant that blooms in early spring may I recommend a Service Berry or Wild Plum. These both grow nicely in the Midwest and are actual natives, so they add wildlife value to your landscape. Or grow actual pear trees, like Bartlett or Kiefer Pears, then you get fruit AND pretty flowers. Our domestic plums bloomed last week also and were beautiful. Or if you’d like a little color- Ornamental cherries are nice, Peach trees have gorgeous pinky-peach blossoms. Redbuds are amazing for color (and you can make lemonade from the flowers)!
Belle of Dirt 