Trouble With the Tree

Last Fall, Betsy and I planted a tree in front of our house. The tree was given to us by a nonprofit company called Treevitalize, which promotes tree planting in urban areas in and around Pennsylvania. Ours was not the only house to receive a tree; several other houses in the neighborhood had applied and also received trees, all of which were being planted on the same day.

Our tree did differ from all the others, though, in that it was a bare root tree, rather than a ball-and-burlap tree. Bare root trees are just that - when the tree is dug up from the nursery, the roots are cleaned of dirt and dipped in a special gel that keeps them moist. Then the roots are wrapped in an air-tight plastic bag until it is time to plant the tree in its new space. Ball-and-burlap trees have a root ball - basically a big ball of dirt around the roots that is then enclosed in a wire cage and wrapped in burlap. The burlap and part of the wire cage are removed when the tree is put in the ground. There are pros and cons to both methods, but it is generally thought that the bare-root method gives the tree a better chance in its new environment.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for our tree. Of all the trees planted that Fall afternoon, ours is the only one that doesn't seem to be surviving. During the Spring, when leaves were starting to bud, I decided to take a picture of our tree each day to track its progress (see below). It quickly became apparent, though, that our tree wasn't progressing like all the others. Although there were some leaves and flowers, most of the branches remained bare. After awhile, green, leafy shoots began coming out of the base of the trunk. At first we thought this was a good sign (at least there's some growth), but we soon found out that this meant the tree was suffering from stress. The leafy shoots are known as "suckers," because they suck the life out of the tree.



Betsy and I found this out when we attended a local tree tenders program, which we just finished up last week. We learned about planting and caring for trees, proper pruning methods, and how to encourage others to get involved with planting trees. We showed one of our instructors pictures of our tree, and he told us that things did not look good - we should cut away the suckers and water it constantly, but even then, the tree was probably going to die.

We're doing as instructed, and hoping for the best. If it doesn't work out, we've been told that eventually the tree will be replaced with a new one by Treevitalize. In the meantime, Betsy and I have been busy planting other trees around the neighborhood, trying to cut down on the vast stretches of unbroken concrete here in South Philly. Fortunately, most of them seem to be holding their own.

Face Lift, Part II

Well, it took a little longer than he expected (eight days instead of three), but the new front door is now painted, installed, and weather-stripped. I have to say, it turned out even better than we hoped it would. For a complete set of before-and-after pictures, go here.

Next year, we'll work on getting the front windows and window frames to match the entryway. Rob is game for working on those as well, which is great.

Face Lift

Cosmetically, the biggest liability our house has is the front door. It literally looks like it's about to fall off. The frame is full of rot, as is the door itself, and the transom window is yellowed, opaque, and depressing. From the beginning, we realized that once the plumbing and electrical infrastructure was taken care of, this project needed to be near the top of the list.



The biggest part of this job was research. We liked the overall look of the door and the frame, and wanted to try and get them restored as close as possible to their original forms. When Betsy and I first started shopping around, we went to several door and window outlets, as well as Home Depot and Lowes. The only options there were bland, tacky metal doors with completely utilitarian frames; no customization available. These were a far cry from the ornately carved-wooden details that were a main feature of our current entryway.

The more Betsy and I looked around, the more we realized that this was not a job for our "learn-as-we-go" M.O., so we went with a professional. Rob Plunkett (no relation to the Raiders quarterback) came recommended from our friends Andy and Meg. He had redone their door frame, and although it was a modern, simple design, it looked great and was done right. We had him take a look at our door, and he was up for the challenge. He thought some of the frame was salvageable, but the rest he would re-create with new wood. The door itself would have to be replaced completely (we figured that). We decided that Betsy and I would get the materials and Rob would do the installation. This is when our real work began.

We were basically buying this new entryway à la carte: we got the door from a place in Northern Liberties, the door knob and lock from Lowes, the mail slot and door bell from a place in Portland, Oregon (everything local was too big for the door), the custom glass from a place in South Philly, and the paint from yet another place in South Philly. Rob handled the lumber for rebuilding the door frame.

It took several months to get everything together, but finally our work is done and Rob's is beginning.



Stay tuned to see how it turns out!

New Couch!

Unless you don't mind waiting almost 4 months for delivery, you probably don't want to order a couch (or anything else) from this place. That said, it's a lot more comfortable than the old one, which came with the house.

Garden Variety

Mid summer here on Wolf Street, and thoughts naturally turn to the outdoors. In our case, outdoors is an 8x12 patch of concrete with a grill, a table, and some chairs. Our regular readers may recall that last summer we put up a fence along one side of the patio - I'm sure you'll be happy to learn it hasn't fallen down yet. This summer, we've decided to plant a garden. But instead of buying (or building) planter boxes to put on top of the concrete, we've opted to dig up portions of the concrete and plant directly into the ground. This idea stemmed from a conversation Betsy and I had with my aunt Kathleen at my brother's wedding last year. She was telling us about how amazing her garden was, and that she was sure it was because she had the concrete removed and planted directly into the ground. I remember this vaguely, but Betsy remembers it vividly. From that moment on, we were definitely digging up the patio.

When spring came, we talked about how we might go about digging up the concrete: rent a jackhammer? Hire a contractor? We kept visiting the subject, but could never come to a decision. Finally, as April turned to May, and our resolve was starting to weaken, we decided to give our friend Kevin a call. Kevin is a general contractor, and we figured he'd at least be able to give us some advice. He suggested a combination of a crazy-sharp saw to score the cement and a sledgehammer to break it up. Unfortunately, his crew had just quit so it was to be just me and him. (On the up side, it was cheaper to hire just one guy instead of three.)

After several scheduling delays, we got to it on a drizzly weekday morning. First, Kevin scored the outline of the garden with the saw while I sprayed the blade with water from the garden hose so the blade wouldn't overheat. A metal blade cutting into concrete with cement walls all around is pretty much louder than the loudest thing you can think of. Louder than standing next to an ambulance siren. Louder than a very low-flying helicopter. Louder than Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine at City Gardens in 1992 (and a lot less pleasant). After a minute, I called time and went to get my ear plugs. I couldn't find any for Kevin, but apparently he's used to this, which had me wondering how he had any hearing left at all.

Once the concrete was scored, the fun began - hitting the concrete with a sledge hammer. That fun lasted about 5 minutes until the fatigue set in. And we still had about 90 minutes of sledge-hammering to go. We switched off every 10 minutes or so, with the person not on hammer duty at the moment sweeping up the shards of concrete into a bucket and then dumping them into contractor trash bags. Kevin knew of a place that would take broken up concrete for $25 a ton, or something like that. Fortunately, we had less than a ton, but it didn't seem like much less than that.

Finally, after hammering, picking, and digging for almost 2 hours, we ended up with this:



As I was leaving for work later that day, our next door neighbor, Ann, came out and said she used to have an in-ground garden in her back yard, but the basement kept flooding so they had to have it cemented over. I said, "Nice timing, Ann."

I didn't really say that.

Anyway, after removing all the sandy dirt and small rocks that were in the holes, followed by the careful arranging of way too many pieces of slate around the perimeter, followed by 30 forty-pound bags of top soil, we began to plant. The left side was for flowers, and the right side was for vegetables and herbs. To start with, we stayed mostly with herbs, but we did put three tomato plants in. The end result is this:





Not bad, eh? These pictures are from about a month ago, so there have been some developments since then. We'll save that for another post, though.

If you've seen one Dr. Phil, you've seen 'em all...

So, healing is boring, it turns out. Healing Waters was our color of choice for the accent wall in the bedroom. But it looked like we had made a nursery and were about to move in a big stuffed bear and apply a ducky border. Pickle is too old for a nursery. So it was back to the drawing board. I thought of layering Healing Waters over Underseas (theme: water!), but Ed thought of mixing our own concoction of the two in an old cookie jar. More color control. And now we give you our own blue. It's not too green and it's not too baby. And we've named it Pepto Blue. Pepto Blue -- kind of retro, kind of kind and good for what ails ye.



(And kind of looks like the Cira Center in a storm.)

Choosing Color - Together!

It's been Ghostship for almost a year and a half now. Icelandic-ly delicious, no? Until push came to shove and the paint was about to be up there on the bedroom walls, all around us, while we slept. Like a blanket of ghost. I got cold feet. Iceland cold. Maybe I heard one too many ghost stories as a child.

Or, maybe I've been watching too much HGTV - but I started thinking about the transposition of warmth and the shade that passes between two hues and architecting atmosphere. And, well, Ghostship is cold, right? So, I went all Bobby Brown on Mr. Hogarty and decided a warm orange, like a mix of mangoes and sun, was in our sleep future. And Mr. Hogarty indulged me - until we put our sleep future up on the wall and it didn't look right either [see 2nd and 4th colors from right in picture]. When it comes to orange, what is good for the back patio - orange! - is not good for the bedroom (as they say) and though the shades were called something like Sienna's Miller and Hut's Desire, they are actually more like orange-y brown and brown-y orange. We thought we learned our lesson there, but then we went back for Tanbark, which is (see brownest shade in picture) pretty damn dark/bark as well.

Why is warm in theory, dark on walls? Oh, paint/color theorist - read our blog, leave a comment and answer my inquiry.



Ed and I wanted no VOC paint and found an affordable line at Sherwin Williams about 8 blocks away. We used their website a lot, especially the handy "Color Visualizer' -- a tool that allows you to paint and re-paint (and re-paint and re-paint and take a break, watch a movie and paint and re-paint) the walls of a generic room choosing from any of the 700 colors with names like Shipshape and Ship's Mate and Procreate and Head of State, to name a few. But not only could we not find a generic bedroom on Color Visualizer that looked like ours, the virtual paint never looked the same when we got it home and put it up. Choosing a color ALONE is a hard task; choosing a color together is like trying to buy one pair of jeans that you can both wear -- ridiculous. One person has to persuade and the other person just has to go with it. Or, get sick of it and walk away. And come back an hour later and say, "Are you still using the Color Visualizer?" No, no, I'm really not.

But, the tall tale spins positively because, if we had just stuck with the icy boat, we would have never come up with Moroccan Brown and Underseas. See? [Pic soon]. We get our warmth and a little chilliness mixed together. Imagine a submarine off of Tunisia. Or a frigate at the Cape of Good Hope. That will be our bedroom. Warm. and cold. And Warm. and cold. And WARM...

And for now we have our own Cy Twombly-like wall [see photo above]. Coincidental and odd because underneath the primer on this same wall, which was also once under 4 layers of wallpaper [see post titled "I fought the Wall and the Wall Won"], there is a heart drawn in pencil and inside the heart, some chicken scratch that says, (to the best of my knowledge): "When I grow up, I want to be a undecipherable." And each word has a pencil line drawn through it. Very Cy.



Or maybe our attempts at Cy Twombley imitation should have gone on the other wall where - under 4 layers of wall paper again - we discovered a picture of a woman with no head; just a skirt covering a pretty big butt and some shapely legs. That one is a lot more Picasso...or no, that other guy...DeKooning.



Post post: No color theorist wrote in, so we did not know that Underseas would be too green to mix in well with the red, warm mud walls of Morocco. More research revealed that Home Despot also has no VOC paint called "Freshaire", and since the Deep is open on Sundays we were forced to buy paint that features in depth interviews of political leaders and topical and cultural icons and TG fawning over anyone remotely related to The Wire. The color that we picked for the accent wall is called, "Omar Coming". Not really, it's called: 'Healing Waters'.

The guy at the Deep told me that since their business is mostly contractors, I was only the second customer to buy no VOC paint in the whole two months that they've had it. The price is almost twice as much as what we paid at Sherwin Williams, so....go to Sherwin Williams. Or Greenable in Old City, though I've heard that that one is pricey too.

But I can't think about the cost now. Let the Healing Waters flow...