Craig Stark of Ecoscapes came as promised to fulfill my free consultation. I asked him to come back and “naturalize” my front yard so I could be sure it got watered every day for the first few weeks, before I leave for a month in Washington. He and his team came last Thursday and did a great job, then it rained for four days straight. God took over the initial watering for me!

I also asked Ecoscapes to put in a few shade trees that would mature in ten years or so because I have an old birch and the main tree shading my house is an ash…and there’s an Ash Borer epidemic that supposedly wipes out everything in its path. Here’s the joke: I found out after they were finished that the Hackberrys they planted are…did you guess?…ash trees!! I’ll have to call to see if they were treated with preventive chemicals. Once the trees are infected, there’s no recovery; you have to treat them in advance. Our local reasonably-priced arborists are charging $110 for a small tree in the ash family, up to $400 for a big old one.