I remember when we bought our house on a densely wooded lot on Walden's Ridge. When I asked the previous owner about the rigors of leaf season at our new abode, he lowered his chin and suppressed a smile.
After 15 years of living on the property, I understand now why he was coy.
A wooded lot is a beautiful thing. The leaf canopy on a mountaintop in midsummer is nature's air-conditioning.
Still, a wooded lot is a lot ... a lot of work and a lot of worry.
Our half-acre lot is full of oaks and poplars. A tree guy once told me that poplars were so-named because "they go 'pop' right before they fall on your house." Nice.
I'm not partial to poplars for another reason - because they begin shedding leaves in August, which means we were already blowing decks and mulching leaves on Labor Day weekend, a process that continues until almost Christmas.
So if you are thinking about buying or building a house on a wooded lot, here are five cautions to keep in mind:
Mark Kennedy1. Shade sheds. The dense shade that is such a blessing in July and August results in ankle-deep leaf drops in late October and November. It's usually the first week of December before all the leaves are off the trees on Walden's Ridge, which means that leaf season is about three and a half months.
You could literally rake leaves every day from Labor Day until Thanksgiving and still have more to do.
Correction, blow leaves, not rake them. Anyone who owns a wooded lot needs an industrial-strength leaf blower, one strong enough to blow cinder blocks into a pile. Try to keep up with a rake, and you might as well quit your day job.
2. Tree work is expensive. I remember asking a tree man with a bucket truck once how much he would charge us to remove one very tall tree from our backyard.
He paced around for several minutes, lifting his cap at points to scratch his head.
"Oh, I reckon we could take it down for to two or three thousand," he said, finally.
"Well, I reckon there's a right smart difference in two and three thousand dollars," I thought. "That's like a car salesman telling you that a car has four to six cylinders. Can we be a little more specific?"
My point here is that once somebody shows up in a bucket truck, you might as well get ready to write a four-figure check. At least.
Our 12-year-old son has become a bit of an entrepreneur when it comes to tree work. Last week, when a dead branch fell and got stuck in a tree, he tied a water bottle onto an extension cord, used it as a lasso and pulled down the limb before cutting it up with a hand saw.
For that, he wrangled funding for a pogo stick.
3. Storms become adventurous. If you have big trees near your house, storms become problematic - especially if you have second-floor bedrooms.
Our sons, 12 and 17, have learned to relocate on couches downstairs if radar suggest a line of thunderstorms is headed our way.
Clearing the yard after a major windstorm - or, heaven forbid, ice storm - can be a major undertaking. In a heavily wooded lot, the number of branches that can potentially fall seems infinite.
All these fallen branches end up in a backyard stick pile that has to be removed from time to time. The going rate is $50 a truck load.
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4. It's raining nuts. When its acorn season, you almost need to wear a hardhat in our backyard. If they fall from high enough, a large acorn can leave a dent in your head.
Also, nuts lead to an abundance of squirrels and chipmunks, which cause the dog to bark, which makes everyone irritable, which makes you want to re-evaluate whether a wooded lot was worth it in the first place.
5. Moss: Friend or foe. If the shade in your yard is too dense, you can forget growing grass in some areas. We have some spots that have been seeded and reseeded so many times that the birds just laugh and line up for the all-you-can-eat buffet.
But where grass won't grow, moss will flourish, which is OK with me because I have come to accept it as nature's artificial turf.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.