Johnny Rotten

We all walk by trees and shrubs and few of us know what they are, or even know they're there. Do you know a Hackberry from an Elm? A Poplar from a Beechnut? I'm no expert. I'm hardly qualified even as a rogue amateur...but I know just enough to blog about what you don't know about trees! Ha!
I cannot overstate how important trees are to the urban landscape. As they are neglected, so is the rest of the civic realm. The absolutely most desirable and most expensive areas to live in Sacramento have the architecture, the civic layout, and the trees than make them that way. This is something that CAN NEVER and WILL NEVER be said about any Elk Grove community. That we actually had visionaries a century ago to build and correctly tree the Elk Grove Park is in stark contrast to the people who've built the suburban shit donut around it.

Lemme show you tree neglect...and it's about fourteen feet from where I blog:

These are two Crepe Myrtles -- the one on my neighbors side was planted sometime before I moved in in 1995. I assume it's roughly 14 years old. My Crepe Myrtle is just under 4 years old, but three times as big, and it stands a good chance at doubling its size by age 14.

See, there's a world of difference between two hours of maintenance a year and zero hours a year. Their tree is still staked after fourteen years! This tells me it hasn't once, not once, been tended to in that time. Set it, and forget it. I bought a simple book on pruning and it tells me to prune after bloom, 14-16" off the top of each branch, each year...probably 25 minutes total. This is the difference between a Johnny Appleseed planting and a Johnny Rotten planting.

You may note that I once wrote about destroying a nice, well tended Pin Oak tree to remove shading from the PV panels. It was a terrible decision to make, but in the end, I planted a red oak on the back side of our plot to make up for it:

With my luck, blogging about how superior I am for having planted this tree, it will surely die. But...if it doesn't, and I correctly prune it, it will be the best tree on Frye Creek by 2048. I oriented the top branches away from buildings, I intend on pruning the lower branches in no more than two years (I want maximum green on the tree for its first few years) and I will shape the canopy correctly over its juvenile life. And...it'll take 25 minutes a year to do. I staked it, the stakes can be adjusted without girdling the tree, I mulched correctly to prevent grass (a growth inhibitor) near the base, and I deep water once every two weeks.

This should be a 40' tree by the end of my life. It will be a 45' tree for whomsoever lives in this house beyond me.