Category: trees

horse race

election signs
Charlottesville Democratic Primary candidates are wearing out the shoe leather. Walking the relatively shadeless streets of our city,
meeting voters in preparation for June 9 Democratic Primary.
When the new Council is seated in November, I hope that they look back and ask themselves why the 1975 Street Tree plan was never implemented.
Revise and adopt that plan in the first one-hundred days!

in praise of the dead

snag in Cook forest
Standing dead trees are an important resource for the living.

But a dead tree, contrary to popular perception, has a plus side. Called a snag, it plays host to a variety of insects, fungi, spiders, and other small native creatures of the woodland; a variety of mammals, including flying and gray squirrels, raccoons, and others; and, surprisingly, about eight-five species of birds in North America. In a forest, at least, maturity and deadwood are relative terms.–Robert Halma, “The Lehigh Valley: A Natural and Environmental History”

 
Excellent article on dead trees, see: “Praise the Dead: The Ecological Values of Dead Trees” by George Wuerthner

Cook Forest

white pine?
Cook Forest State Park is known for some of America’s finest virgin white pine and hemlock timber stands and was once called the “Black Forest” due to the preponderance of evergreen tree coverage.–Wikipedia

q. phellos

willow oak
easing into spring, silhouette of a willow oak leafing out. Sometimes juvenile leaves look like miniature versions of the full grown leaf, that is not the case with the willow oak.

zelkova elysium

Swan Point
Elysium or the Elysian Fields admission was reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes. Later, it expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic, where they would remain after death, to live a blessed and happy life, and indulging in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life.– Wikipedia

Water Street

south water street edge Tuesday
Tuesday this was the south edge of Water Street


Thursday edge of Water
In the 48 hours between Tuesday and Thursday the city had the trees cleared.


multimodal path City walk
The City is hoping to establish an off road, 10 foot wide multi-modal path between downtown and Meade Park in the Woolen Mills. The path and the fence (to keep pedestrians off the railroad tracks) have been planned for years. This is a section of the path and fence adjacent to “City Walk”. The scarified area pictured above will receive treatment similar to this in City Walk in the coming months.

How best to handle the commons, the City owned right of way throughout town, 156 miles of street?
Tomorrow, the City is holding a community engagement event for the “Streets That Work” project that will address this and other questions related to streets.
Be there!

Streets that Work Public Input Meeting – Saturday December 13, 2014
City staff invites the public to be a part of the process and come out to its Streets that Work Public Input Meeting. Please join us on Saturday, December 13 from 8:00 am – 11:30 am at the Carver Recreation Center Gymnasium to share your ideas and join the conversation.