Springtime 2010

It's late March. We've had some rain, and some warm days. The trees have started to bud. Philly becomes a different place in Spring. This little budder is one of our Amalankyer trees that we planted in front. As I write this, I realize that the story of this planting is long and funny - or at least telling about Philly: Want to hear it?

A tree is planted in Philadelphia (about 4 times)

by Ben

Through our friends and neighbors Paul & Lisa, we applied for free trees through a City Fairmount Parks planting initiative. First we planted 2 cherry trees on Randolph St. The City decides which trees you get and they send contractors to cut a hole in the sidewalk; they deliver trees to a neighborhood site and and then the neighborhood group does the rest with free shovels and mulch. Anyway, our first trees on Randolph St. went down without much of a hitch in fall of 2008, and the planting for 5th St (pictured above) was last fall, 2009. We applied for 2 trees on 5th St, and were approved, but the city came and cut one of the holes in front of our neighbor's property instead of ours. The tree planting operation went down as scheduled, but we couldn't rightly put this tree in on our neighbor's property (although it was tempting because I had previously approached the neighbor with tree applications and he said no and that "trees are dirty" or perhaps "messy" (you have to clean up the leaves?). Sort of shocking, but anyway, you can't pick your friends' noses and you can't plant your neighbor's property.

So, we set aside the Amelanchier tree that was supposed to go in that hole, and started the long, drawn out process of asking the City to send contractors back and cut a new hole (and fill in the hole they cut in our neighbor's sidewalk) We actually temporarily planted the tree at Paul and Lisa's place for about a week or two while we in communication (if it can be called that) with the City. Finally we just cut our own hole in the right place and it was a bright Saturday morning when Catherine drove the 2 blocks to Paul and Lisa's place to get the tree. She had noticed a piece of black plastic over the hole but thought that perhaps I had covered it so people wouldn't fall in (I was out of town). She dug up the tree, came back with the tree in the back of the truck, only to find that our lovely hole in the concrete had been filled with concrete and nicely troweled to the grade of the sidewalk. The contractors had instructions to fill a wrongly-placed hole on our block and they showed up and filled our new righteously-placed hole. As I was out of town, and had already returned the borrowed concrete saw, the poor tree went back in the truck, back to Lisa and Paul's, and eventually it was brought over to our friends' Alonso and Katie's place - because they wanted a new tree after the city had come and chopped their old beautiful tree down because of a neighbor's complaints! The astonishing efficiency of this action as well as the beautiful job they did filling in our hole with concrete is a testament to the corrupt, disfunctional, rambling mess that is the City of Philadelphia.

The end of the story is that 6 months later, at the next round of tree planting, we were able to cut the hole again and plant another Amelanchier tree. And a beautiful tree it is.