Tree Work
I believe I have discussed my fascination with trees. My favorite painting is one by an Argentine artist named Rikelme, and it is painted in the fashion of the Group of Seven Canadian artists that painted in the 19th Century in a light Rococo style. It is a lone tree on the rolling Pampas of Argentina. When I went last week to the Mission San Luis Rey and stopped by the grave site of my father, where his ashes were placed in a wall behind a carved stone tile, I noted once again that the one image he wanted placed on his memorial was that of a lone tree, one which looks oddly like the one in the Rikelme painting, something he had never seen. It all makes me feel that my connection to trees is not altogether random.
Defining what constitutes a tree is a bit more challenging out here in sub-tropical zone #9 San Diego. Botanists define a tree as a perennial plant with an elongated and woody stem on which leaves grow. Several years ago a tree service guy bid $10,000 to trim all the trees on my property. I was shocked by the price and we came to an arrangement for him to trip half o my trees (the northern half of the property) for $5,000. I thought that was a good deal since it was that half of the property that needed the trimming more. It made me think about the trees on the property. I also hired a consulting arborist for a session to evaluate my trees overall for health. That taught me a bit more about my trees.
The most prominent trees on my property are four large ficus trees that separate me from my neighbor to the north. They are thick and full and provide a significant visual barrier between the two properties. They seem healthy and I am not so inclined to have them thinned out just yet since I prefer that they keep their “fully grown” nature on our boundary. The next most prominent trees on the property are six Palo Verde trees spread across the front to of the hillside. I have supplemented those with four younger Palo Verde trees that I have planted on the back hillside and behind the garage. Palo Verdes are desert trees that have a lovely green color throughout. In Spanish, the name means green stick because the tree has no leaves as we know them, but rather an abundance of greed sticke on all the branches. I assume that photosynthesis must occur in those little greed sticks the way it does in most tree’s leaves. They are a subtle yellow flowering tree and they do very well in almost any weather conditions we get out here. I never know whether they need trimming or not, but I tend to get them trimmed from the bottom up to highlight the canopies.
The next most prolific trees on my hilltop are the wild live oaks and the wild manzanita trees. Both trees look like they are deciduous, but neither really loses their leaves and are therefore really evergreen. They are particularly well-suited to the chaparral that we have covering our hills. They are really a blend of a bush and a tree and I trim them up from the bottom to make sure they look more tree-like than not. They grow in rocky and poor soil and need very little water, which makes them very hardy and able to grow almost anywhere. The live oaks have small oval leaves that fall gradually throughout the year and create a blanket of mulch under their limbs. They have small oval acorns, which makes them distinctly oak. The manzanita are a bit more distinct in that their trunks are a lovely red color and they grow in a particularly craggy manner that makes them very artistic trees. They seem to have random branches that die off, requiring regular pruning to keep them clean and neat looking. This pruning only makes them look more artistic in a giant bonsai sort of way. I haven’t really counted the number of either of these trees on my hillside since they tend to grow near large boulders and they blend into the scenery in a very organic way. There are two large oaks on the north side of the hilltop. They do need some regular pruning and do some, have Joventino do some and should probably have the tree guys do some.
The rest of the trees are an array of plantings that I have done over the past five years. Sometimes I plant them for visual blocking and sometimes I plant them specifically to introduce some flowering into the landscape. I have planted an Irish Strawberry Tree (Arbutus) set amongst the grove of citrus trees on the south side of the garden. I have six citrus or various types, a fig tree (ficus) and an oddly placed plum tree on the downhill side off the southern corner of the house. I have also planted several Crepe Myrtle’s down by the driveway entrance. Those look like a cross between a bush and a tree and where the more recently planted lavender flowering one has done well, the original red flowering one has never particularly flourished. My Tulip Tree, Coral Tree, Silk Tree and Jacaranda have all taken to the front of the hillside very well and flower pretty much seasonally when they a re supposed to from January through November.
I have left the palms for last because palms seem such an artificial interloper to our landscaping. Nonetheless, many people plant them because they do well out here and grow particularly tall in this environment. I have two very prominent twin palms between my garage and house. They are tall enough that they provide a visual marker for our house from the highway a few miles below. Palms need to be trimmed annually or they will start to look wooly as the dying fronds bend down to form a natural collar below the crown. Joventino is able to keep them trimmed by standing on the garage roof and using his longest pole saw. I have three other palms in the front of the house. There is one each on the two front corners of the property on the road front. they look to have been planted at the same time as the two by the garage and they seem purposely to define the property limits along the road. I have another palm that has sprouted on its own on the larger boulder gathering that represents the highest point on my property. This Mexican Palm is considered a weed tree by some, but I think they are nice highlight trees so long as you do what is needed to keep them properly groomed, which I do.
My succulent trees range from my specimen Queensland Bottle Tree (Which needs trimming of the branches overhanging the house), the four big Yucca stands half front, half back, and all manner of cacti that have a grown in proportion to huge and towering stature. I keep those trimmed as much as possible by having Joventino address them regularly. He will also eventually cut down the two Blue Agave seed stalks that have grown to 30-35 feet (one in the front and one in the far back). Both are fully flowered, so sometime in the next few months as those seeds spread and gradually fall, Joventino will have to take his chainsaw to these large woody stalks and cut them down to a pineapple-shaped stump. I will leave the one on the lower hillside but will have to have someone remove the one on the front hill. That will leave a gap in the landscape. That giant Blue Agave is set amongst a set of boulders that form a perfect framing for some other special planting. I am thinking of buying a large Bougainvillae to plant there since the spot gets good sun and the color would be a nice addition to the front of the house. I am imagining it cascading down that hillside towards the garage and being a nice change of pace for that spot. There seems never to be any lack of tree work that is needed on this hilltop.