06-04-00
When I first moved into my apartment, the sun shone down on my deck all day long, and the spot my flower garden is in received adequate sun exposure to count as sunny to partly sunny/partial shade. Things were good, and I would sit out on my deck, basking in the radiant glow of the sun. And then that following spring, the maple tree dropped little seeds all over the place, and I swept them up. Little tiny maple trees grew in all of the flower pots, and I spent the spring picking them out of everything. By late May, the mulberries above the deck came into fruit, and I tracked little purple berries all over my kitchen floor and the cream-colored carpet in the living room. I swept those up too, and invested in a better mop and some quality stain-removing carpet cleaner.
This is now my third spring and summer here. The slender 6-foot sapling that grew next to the garden is now as big around as my forearm and at least 15 feet tall. It blocks the sun from the perennial wildflower bed for almost the entire day, giving me little more than a shade garden. And, the canopy of the trees around my deck have now grown so much that they almost completely prevent the sun from reaching the plants there.
Today, I decided to do something about it. I drove over to KMart and purchased work gloves and a pruning hacksaw, and with sheer brute force, steely determination and more than a little sweat, I took down every limb around my deck that I could reach, stripped most of the limbs off of the 'sapling', and girdled it. That's where you strip all of the bark off of the main trunk in order to deprive it of nutrients. The wood is too green and resilient for me to get through with a small handsaw right now. Once the damn thing has kicked off, I will take it the rest of the way down. I also plan to girdle the mulberry, but I must do that under the cover of darkness so my nefarious plans won't be foiled by do-goody neighbors who don't have pale lavender spots all over their carpet.
