Treemendous Trees

It would have been lovely if someone could have pointed out that it’s October already.  How did that happen?  When did that happen? (Sometime between Friday and Saturday, I imagine).

It seems like the leaves changed color and started dropping overnight!

The other day the bay was so calm (which is rare for Lake Superior), and the surface of the water looked like a mirror, reflecting all of the vibrancy of the nearby trees.  The water just glowed shades of gold and orange.  It was so beautiful and I almost sprinted back to the house for my camera to snap a photo for Instagram or the blog, but I decided to just enjoy it.

I’ve been trying to live in the moment more.

Yesterday I did manage to snap a few photos of the trees – but only because I was outside photographing a DIY project in a makeshift set I made.  I needed something larger than my normal backdrops, so I morlocked our old turquoise front door out of the garage but because I could only manhandle it so far, I set up shop in a fairly visible spot where everyone who drove or walked by could see me.  Feeling embarrassed that I was taking photos of a cleaning product in a pile of dog kibble on top of an old door (I am an artist, lol), every time someone went by I either sprinted toward the garage and hid, or started taking photos of the trees, which seemed less weird than what I was doing.

Gosh, the trees are pretty!

In addition to our large blue spruce (my favorite), we’ve got some baby blue spruces closer to the garage.  Of course there is also a lot of cedar – in addition to the wee ones we planted.  There’s a huge white pine and tons of birch trees.  It’s a really good mix, encircling three sides of our property.

But reading this infographic by TruGreen really made me panic…

Trees only live 50-300 years?!?  Our neighbor is supposedly cutting some dead trees between our property this fall and I have this recurring nightmare that I’ll wake up and she’ll have clear cut the land between our homes entirely.

Then everyone will definitely know all of the weird stuff I get up to.

And did you see that each of us pretty much consumes a whole tree every year?  Wow.

Thanks to my last post with TruGreen, I’ve still been thinking about our property and the trees we have.  As a little update: thanks to their encouragement, I’m going to be pruning our existing cedar hedges this weekend (last month I pruned the raspberries).  As per their advice – and advice from readers! – I’ll also be bundling
up our little newly planted cedars this year so the harsh winter wind that whips off
the lake won’t parch the poor little guys.

I was happy to collaborate with TruGreen again because I really owe them one – thanks to some of the FREE tips I picked up from their website, I stopped scalping my poor lawn and raised the blade on the riding lawn mower so now when I cut the grass, it stills looks green – not brown – when I’m done.  This means I’m mowing more frequently, but the lawn is looking better and better – perhaps you noticed in Friday’s post?  It’s looking more lush.  Although I’ve abandoned weed whacking around the shore and fire pit (perhaps you noticed that too, haha), thanks to TruGreen I haven’t given up on lawn cutting just yet, like I normally do.  Instead of letting it grow super long before that first snowfall, I’m following their advice for winter prep: “after grass stops growing, cut the lawn a final time at one setting lower than normal. This will reduce matting of the turf over winter and reduce the occurrence of snow mold problems.”

TruGreen has so many great resources on their website and also an opportunity for a quote to create a customized plan for your yard and trees, to prep them for winter and keep them healthy.  Whether you’re interested in some professional help (because you’d like to branch out in your yard maintenance), or just looking to soak up some free information like me, hop on over and root around their site.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of TruGreen.ca.  The opinions, terrible puns, meandering digressions, turquoise-laden photos, and text are all mine.  The crab apples, however, are my Mom’s.  She brought over a giant bag one day for no reason whatsoever so I photographed them on a turquoise background (naturally) and now I guess I’ll be looking up crab apply jelly recipes…?  I think she wants to help with “Project Tanya Embraces Fall”.