Removing Two Elm Trees

 The February Freeze killed the Monterrey Oak tree, but it also caused a lot of damage with the Elm trees on the other side of the house.  There was the possibility they would recover, despite the damage, but by September it seemed clear that at least two of them would need to be removed.

We got a couple of quotes, and chose Good Guys Tree Service, who did the air-spading work, to remove the trees.  $2850.  As with the other tree work, it took about a month or so from when we said to do the work for them to show up.

But they showed up on Wednesday, about 2:30 pm. and got right to work.  There was a crew of 7 guys.  Some worked from the roof; some from the ground; some from in the trees; some for the neighbor's yard.

They started with the older, larger tree in the middle,

 

, removing limbs and trimming it back to just one large trunk.

 And eventually even that trunk came down.

Then they did the same to the other tree.

By 4:30, both trees were down and all the branches, trunks, and wood was cleared off.

leaving only two stumps in the ground

We will see how the Texas Sedge and Inland Sea Oaks recover.

Rock Wall around Fuzzy

 Once the air spading is done, we know how to work around the roots to construct a retaining wall around Fuzzy.  That will allow us to bring in more dirt and improve the slope of this section of the front yard.  Of course, we have a sort of mock-up of what the wall will look like.

but now we want to do it for real.

To define where the wall would be, we use a string and stakes to lay it out and get it level.  We tried draping the string with plastic, to get a better idea of the placement, but I think that was of limited benefit.

We begin on one side.  We have to dis-assemble the existing mock up, both to give us room to work, and for the rocks to use.

Then we start to work across the yard, from the sidewalk towards the driveway.

Selecting and placing the rocks.

Sometimes we have to remove some rocks and start over with different ones, but we continue to the corner and then up next to the driveway.

Then we roll the extra rocks up out of the way

And we move the sprinkler head near the driveway in the middle of this section of the yard to be in the corner of the terraced bed.

Then we rent a pick-up (from U-Haul, $62.98) and make two trips to Whittlesey Landscape for 2 cubic yards of professional mix (2.5 for the second trip) $105.36 and $128.67.

Our computations said we needed about 4 cubic yards -- a wedge  11 feet on a side, 13 feet wide and 16 inches tall -- but the two trips seem to fill it pretty well.

Air Spading around Fuzzy

 The live oak planted in the front yard, between the driveway and the sidewalk we call Fuzzy.  The last section of the house to dig up is from Fuzzy to the house.

 

Our experience with the Spanish Oak in the front yard, and, to a lesser extent, the Monterrey Oak in the back, is that trees are not happy when you dig around their roots, and even when you try to stay well back, they can die.  We don't want that to happen to Fuzzy, so we want to be very careful of it's roots while planning and digging.

Our plan is to terrace the area under Fuzzy, just as we did on the main front yard, so that we provide more, better, dirt for Fuzzy's roots.  We have a temporary retaining wall around it, and just need to make that permanent.

What do we need to protect, in terms of Fuzzy's roots?  Searching, we find something called the Critical Root Zone.  The Critical Root Zone for a tree shows how far out you need to be to preserve the roots.

This picture is for a 20-inch diameter tree; Fuzzy is about 22 inches, so measures should be about 10% more.  But certainly 1/2 CRZ at 11 feet is a point we should try not to disturb.  Which means we can put our retaining wall at 11 feet (from Fuzzy).

We marked off where the wall would go then.

But to put the wall here, we need to know where the major roots are, so that we do not damage them in the construction of the wall.  And this is where Air Spading comes in.

Air Spading is basically using high pressure air to break up and move the dirt.  While it is enough force to break up the dirt, it is not enough to hurt the roots, so it removes the dirt, but leaves the roots.  It basically is like a high pressure washer, but with air instead of water.  It takes a big compressor and a special air spading nozzle.

There are a couple of companies in town that advertise they do air spading.  We contacted two.  The person from the first company was uncertain how it worked, and what it was for, so they priced it at $350 for the first hour and $150 for each hour after that.  The second company, Good Guys Tree Service, understood what I wanted, and priced it at $700.  We went with Good Guys, since they apparently had more experience.  Their estimate said:

"PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING: Airspading is a necessarily dusty and messy task that is designed to protect and prevent damage to the tree's root system. Dirt particulates, small rocks and materials may be jetted up to 50' from project area.  Large Stones, Objects, or any other discoveries that will not be displaced by the air jet will be left as found. Exposed roots should be re-covered with a light layer no more then 3/4" thick of hardwood mulch within 2 weeks of airspade exposure."

They took about an hour to do the work.  They showed up with a pick-up truck towing a large compressor, attached a hose to the compressor, and the air spade to the hose and went to work.

The result was a trench blown out of the dirt, exposing the roots.  Dirt everywhere!

(I expect that the soil being pretty dry helped.)

This exposes the root very well.  We can see that there are some large roots, especially on both ends of the trench.

while other sections have much smaller roots.

Planting the Front Yard

 Linda has selected a number of native plants and grasses to plant in the front yard.

The bulk of the area is to be a form of prairie grass developed by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  We have sown it over much of the front yard. It is a mixture of Buffalo grass, Blue Grama, and Curly Mesquite.

 Before we were aware of this, Linda had separately sown some  Blue Grama, and so our mix may have more of that than the Wildflower Center.

 In addition, she wants to put a set of taller grasses in the back:  Mexican feather grass, Lindheimer muhly, Bamboo muhly, Gulf muhly and Sideoats grama.  Then we planted some Bluebonnets. 

And she planted a bunch of other native plants:  Blackfoot daisy, Gregg's mist flower, salvia greggi, Barbados cherry, mealy blue sage, purple coneflower.

 

Update, May 2022:  most of the plants have grown quite nicely, especially the buffalo grass, and the bluebonnets.

But we noticed a bug on the bluebonnets.  Then another. And another! 

We looked it up and it is a Conchuela stink bug.  We have captured about 120 of them in the bluebonnets in our front yard.

 

Update, June 2020:  The bluebonnets are gone to seed, and the temperatures have reached 100 degrees, but the front yard is holding up well.