This is the story of our adventures -- every day and extraordinary; our dreams -- tiny and grand; our gardens -- ornamental and sustaining; this is the story of our journey.  We are a family of four living a mindful, simple life here in Los Angeles County.  We are green, conscious, and forward thinking.  We keep an eye on the past because some of the best things have already been done and bear repeating.  Walk and talk with us, have a glass of wine, taste a peach or a tomato, blow some bubbles and watch them drift up over the canyon ridge.  Enjoy!

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Our ash tree is bent on world domination

We have one single ash tree. Standing tall and straight among the gnarled and stocky live oaks. You can see it below, in the post about SoCal rains, just starting to leaf out (I swear it lost its leaves only a month or so ago). I always think of it as my echo of the East Coast -- the house where I grew up, where my parents still live, has several ash trees. Unlike many other tree varieties -- oak for example -- the species of ash we have here LOOKS the same as those in New Jersey. So, this tree reminds me of things like my brother's tree forts and my swing. But I have never seen anything like the hell-fired push this tree has made this year to populate the entire word with its progeny! It is INSANE. We have pulled, I do not exaggerate, 100's of thousands of seedlings. I cannot take pictures to do the budding population justice. In a matter of 30 seconds one can pull hundreds of the little plants. Their survival rate must be low but, dang, many of them develop a little woody trunks before they are two inches tall! In about 15 seconds one can "weed" a pile like this in a 10" square:



And anytime you turn over the soil of beds you find this:


Our oak trees had a crazy year this year -- insane acorn production -- and we have oaks sprouting all over the place. But, we have dozens of oak trees. And the sprout rate isn't even close to comparable!

I'm just wondering, do ash seedlings count as a cover crop?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You can run from NJ, but you can't hide.

I loved your tree swing when I was a kid.