A Bradford Pear storm
I figure every good storm should have a name. At our house, this morning's rain and wind will live in our memory for - gosh - weeks as The Great Bradford Pear Storm of 2005.
Stepped out the door around 7:30 today and found that about a third of the pear tree in our front yard had split from the main trunk and fallen onto the neighbor's steps. I grabbed a saw, but quickly discovered the truism that Bradford pears are fragile trees. Both broken branches snapped off cleanly.
So I dragged the limbs off the neighbors' property and left the mess 'til later. Driving to work, I saw several other ornamental trees that fared badly during the night. We had allowed our pear tree to grow top-heavy. I liked the way it grew so tall, so fast after the place was built in 1997. It threw more and more shade across the sunny side of the house in summer, so I let it grow, against my wife's objections. But with a heavy load of leaves and branch wood, more than a half-inch of rain during the night on our rain gauge, and gusts (at least at BWI) to 32 mph, it was all too much for the young tree.
The surviving branches still look full enough to justify preserving the tree, though my wife is already suggesting that we have the Bradford removed and replaced with a nice little weeping cherry or some such fussy tree. My sympathies are with our scarred survivor.
The storm, meanwhile, continues to blow. The airport had recorded more than an inch of badly needed rain by 9 a.m., and stiff gusts. Forecasters said the rain had fallen during the night at up to 0.8 inch an hour in some of the heavier rain bands. The creeks are rising, and on the roads, visibility was down, and ponding was contributing to numerous minor accidents, including a tow truck - directly in front of me this morning, that - following too close for conditions - skidded into the rear of a passenger car on York Road in Lutherville. No one was hurt.
So now I'm looking at a wet weekend in which I will have to drag these heavy limbs into the woods. Or, maybe I'll go out and rent a chain saw and cut them up first. A weekend that includes a chain saw is always well-spent.
Comments
You have fallen for the short-term solution in landscaping. Fast-growing, brittle trees. IT's a bad trend that has evolved for the immediate gratification nature of today's culture. Think towards the furure. Wouldn't someone 40 years from now love it if you had had the foresight to plant an oak or a beech or other such long-lived shade trees in your yard? Wuldn't you have loved it had you bought an older house with such a tree... Yes, I am on a bit of a tear about this but it will be a sad day 50 years from now when yards are shadeless and the landscape impoverished because no one planted with the long-term in mind.
Posted by: Amy | May 28, 2005 11:31 AM
Don't be so quick to judge. First, it was the builder, not I, who chose the Bradford pear. Second, while I would love to plant an oak in its place, I live in a townhouse with a front yard approximately 10 feet by 12 feet. And, while I want very much to shade the house for energy-efficiency reasons, it is not exactly suitable for a Wye Oak wanna-be. Or even a maple. Finally, we did buy an older house when we first moved to Baltimore 25 years ago. It was on a double lot graced by giant oaks, in a neighborhood full of more big, mature oaks and hickories. My son and I labored many hours in the 1980s to help defend our oaks (and the neighbors') from the gypsy moths. And we wept several years later when a violent storm toppled many of the tall trees on our block; the storm also scared the neighbors into cutting down several more. We moved only because the kids were grown and gone and we no longer had the energy to rake the flood of leaves that fell every year. We bought in a townhouse development because it is an efficient use of land for housing. And that's why I won't apologize for having a brittle Bradford pear in my front yard.
Posted by: Frank Roylance | May 31, 2005 11:37 AM