It is still raining and we have not seen the contractors who are making
the railbed for our caboose in a week. The former pool area is littered
with wet tarps and bricks and disembowelled pool equipment. Also, lots of
mud and gravel. We can’t install the ties until the contractors are done
and the soils engineer blesses their work.
While waiting, we are taking advantage of the wet by planting trees. Costco
had a sale on redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens ‘aptos blue’). We bought
one for $30 to go with the three we planted a year ago. The new arrival is much smaller (only six feet) but the different heights look good together – more like a natural grove. It will end up shading the caboose.
We also bought a threadleaf Japanese Maple ‘Garnet’ (Acer palmatum var. dissectum) to go on the garden side of the bank under
the oaks. Japanese Maple is said to be oak root fungus resistant. A
large California Lilac (Ceanothus) came home too – again for the river
bank inside the fence. I ordered another Western Redbud (Cercis occidentalis) tree. This is a drought-resistant California native as lovely as
its eastern cousin but
needs less water and grows more slowly. The redbud we planted two years ago
on the bank is doing well: it is still covered with lovely purple and
white buds even though the heart-shaped leaves are starting to open.
For the wild side of the bank, on the other side of the garden fence,
I ordered a California pepper tree (Schinus molle) from the nursery. I will know in a week if it is available. It is not the kind of tree they carry in
stock. The master gardener kept asking if I really
wanted a pepper and did I know it was not a California native. I explained
that we are happy owners of 200 feet of steep river bank where a very large
very messy tree like a pepper can thrive even if it does come from Brazil.
We already have one California pepper and
it is very happy among the cottonwoods that line the bank. Cottonwoods are pretty enough but we want something with leaves all year to screen the house.
Right now, the cottonwoods are bare and squirrel nests are plainly visible.
The nests look like basketball-sized bundles of leaves high up in the
branches. Some trees have several of them swaying in the wind. There are
so many cottonwoods that the Guadalupe River becomes a squirrel freeway in summer: the little golden fuzzballs hardly have to jump to get from tree to tree.
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