Author Archives: kkovarik

I’ve just come back from looking at the Calumet Bridge over the ravine, the one by the North High School. For those of you who aren’t from the neighborhood, the bridge has been removed because it was falling apart more rapidly than expected. Pete and Mike McLaughlin said that they had cut down many of the trees, and I had to go see for myself.

So many trees were now gone, including a beautiful black gum that Pete thought was over 300 years old. Such a magnificent tree, having been here since 1710 or thereabouts. The fall color on that tree was so beautiful. The nice thing about crossing the Calumet Bridge was that Nyssa’s crown was right at eye level, making it a unique perspective from a human’s point of view. (The scientific name for the black gum is Nyssa sylvatica which I somehow turned into Nyssa, a lovely name for a lovely tree.) Along with Nyssa some oaks were taken down. I know that sometimes these things can’t be helped, but I am very sad to see my lovely Nyssa gone. Although what’s done is done, we are working with city officials to make sure the restoration efforts are sufficient for the amount of damage that occurred.

Until next time.

It’s official, Fall is here! Pete thinks I’m a bit premature, but I saw some trees that had leaves that weren’t green. Granted, you had to look hard for them, but there they were: a beautiful reddish-orange maple and a bright scarlet sassafras leaf.  Pete says the color change occurs when the days get shorter. As winter approaches, the trees know that they won’t have enough light or water for photosynthesis. When they stop making food, the green chlorophyll leaves, allowing the other colors to shine through. I’ve lost myself many a time just picking up a colorful leaf, staring at its beauty. Once, it was poison ivy…but still very beautiful!

Autumn is one of my favorite times of the year. I love fall and winter, with their crisp air and woolen clothes. When Pete and I lived in Tallahassee, Florida, there wasn’t much happening in way of fall colors. I remember there was one tree fairly close to us that was a maple of some sort, and it would change to a glorious red. Every year, Pete and I would get in the car, drive to this restaurant and park in the back part of the lot where the tree was. I’d get out, sit on the car hood and just stare – I missed it so much. We’d also head up to Atlanta, Georgia, where there were even more trees that we could look at. It’s funny the things that you take for granted (almost) when you no longer have them around.

Oh, and I missed snow. I’d come home to Ohio each year, hoping to have snow to play in. I’d get back to Florida, and my mom would inevitably tell me when I called to say I was home safe and sound, “It’s snowing here!” Christmas just wasn’t the same decorating a tree in shorts and sweating. I usually lost it when Bing Crosby started to sing “White Christmas.” And the smell of a Christmas tree is one of my favorites. Our first Christmas back in Ohio was spent up in Michigan with my brother and sister-in-law. They had two feet of snow on the ground, and on Christmas Eve, it started to snow again. I had forgotten the quiet that comes with snow, and the blueish beauty of it under street lights.  You somehow feel that there can’t be anything wrong in the world at that moment.

That reminds me of something that Pete did when we were in Florida. He travelled to Chicago and came back, knocking on the door to our apartment. I was a little peeved, thinking,”He should have a key, why do I have to get up and open the door?” But I did, and there he stood, lilac flowers in hand. They don’t grow in Florida (too hot), and lilacs are my favorite flower – such a romantic gesture that brought me to tears. Lilacs grew outside the window by the bedroom at my grandma’s that was always mine when I came to visit. And my grandpa used lilac cologne. They were also the flowers I carried at my renewal of vows ceremony, cut from my back yard.

Another plant aroma related tale: My boss had some sweet grass that she was given by a Native American Indian. I put it to my nose and started to tear up: it smelled exactly like my grandpa’s barn where we played as kids, a memory I hadn’t thought of for many, many years. Smell has such strong recall. I guess that’s why plants and trees are very much mingled with my memories.

Until next time!

I spent a good chunk of Saturday morning removing weeds from my front and side gardens. Because of all the rain as well as the extreme heat, the weeds had grown to giant proportions. I was especially having a rough time with the crab grass, which laughed at the mulch I had put down to keep the weeds at bay, spreading its tentacles like an octopus, sending its roots everywhere. Between that and the sour grass, I filled three garden bags. There’s also some plant I’ve not seen before that was everywhere. But it all looks so much better…for now!

This isn’t my first battle with weeds. One of the previous owners of our home had the misguided idea to plant Canada thistle in our back yard. My mom and I spent half a day ridding the yard of every trace of the weeds. Within a week, they were back as if we had never removed them. We finally got rid of the problem by taking all of the soil they were growing on and putting it into our empty fish pond. Pete and I went through each shovelful, looking for the tiniest root, which would start a new plant.

Another nasty weed we have is nut sedge. It grows everywhere in our yard; it’s only redeeming quality is that it is very easy to pull out – if you could call that a redeeming quality. We’ve also fought morning glories, dandelions, and some viney thing with lobed leaves.

It always surprised me where weeds could grow – and how proficient they were in taking over.  Give them a crack and they’ll take a yard. Some plants are so tenacious that they will grow through anything including man-made materials. I suppose I should count my blessings that we didn’t have any of those plants. Japanese knotweed is capable of growing through pavement, walls and buildings as the picture to the left shows. Granted, it will take a few years to do so, but grow through that weed will.

I wonder how many gallons of salt water (my grandmother’s solution to weeds) would be needed to take down a Japanese knotweed? A Gordian knot indeed… perhaps Alexander’s sword would do the trick.

Until next time!

As I’ve mentioned in recent posts, we’ve been working on a few maps for the Arboretum. One map is of the significant trees within the Arboretum. And since we now have the list of addresses from the City of Columbus of where trees can be planted, that, too, has been turned into a map. [Thanks, John!]  So, if you go to the Maps section of the blog, you can see John’s mashup of the maps of the significant trees along with the map of where trees can be planted by the city. Both are interactive with markers that can be clicked on for more information. Sample information for the significant trees would be:

Address:
City: Columbus
State: Ohio
Location: Front yard
Genus: Quercus
Species: alba
Common name: Oak, White (2)
Symbol: w
Notes:
latitude: 40.024318

In this case, the symbol “w” stands for white oak; John’s included a legend to explain the various symbols for the types of trees

Sample information of the city’s addresses for tree planting is:

Number:
Street:
# oFront tree: 1
SideOn: Front
PlantingCode: PSLarge
Comments: OLD STUMP
Assigned:
NEWS: E
MapPageNumber: 19 J-14
latitude: 40.022861

The Planting Code is the size of tree that can be planted.

Another change to the blog is I’ve added a roster of our Steering Committee. Our little group has grown by quite a bit, and I expect it will grow even more as we get additional partnerships going.

Until next time!

We had our monthly LOUA meeting this past Wednesday at our house. It was one packed meeting, and we weren’t even all there, missing a few members who were unable to attend; we may need to find a bigger space in the future! Our merry little band has grown to 14 members. It’s great that so many people are interested in the Arboretum. I won’t bore you with all the bits about the budget and volunteer hours, but there were some other pretty exciting parts of the agenda.

One of the discussions revolved around the amount of trash that is getting into the ravine through the run-off from I-71. The clean-up on Saturday showed just how much trash comes in with heavy, torrential rains. We really need to stop the garbage before it comes into the ravine; picking up trash around Silver Drive and I-71 will only alleviate some of the problem as most of the garbage is washed down from I-71 and therefore, not easily picked up.

We’ve also made good progress on the two walking tours of significant trees within the Arboretum. There will be both a long and short route. All the possible trees have been identified, so it’s now a matter of creating a path from tree to tree for a lovely walk that offers a nice mix of all the types of trees we are lucky enough to have in our neighborhood. The trees highlighted in the walking tours will be the best, easily-viewed examples within the Arboretum. We also received the city’s list of places where trees can be planted in the fall. With an exact number of trees, we can begin to work on figuring out what trees we need to have at hand: how many oaks, how many hickories, etc. This is really coming together. I can’t wait until that first tree is ready to be planted as I know it will be a celebration and culmination of all of our hard work.

The best part of the meeting (at least in my opinion!) was seeing Jake Boswell’s sample of the markers for the trees. The design isn’t quite finalized, so I can’t show you just yet what they will look like. I promise I will as soon as we have the final version. But I must admit that the marker is beautiful, informative and best of all, inexpensive. These are the markers that will be placed by the significant trees on the walking tours, giving those on the walk a little bit of information about the tree: species, common name, the like.

I think that about covers it.

Until next time!

Our newest addition is a Quercus bicolor, or the white swamp oak. It can handle slightly hydromorphic  soils. And no, I had no idea what that word meant (other than something about water) until I looked it up on the Internet: “of or pertaining to soil having characteristics that are developed when there is excess water all or part of the time.” So our new baby will fit in perfectly in our backyard because Pete has made a rain garden back there. The soil tends to stay wetter because of that.

It’s funny that I ended up with this particular tree. There is one a few streets over from our house on the way to the ravine. I always pass under it and comment on how much I loved that tree. The branches are sweeping and have large lobed leaves. It can live 300 years, achieving a height of 65 to 80 feet. The fall color is very nice for an oak, a beautiful scarlet. Pete remembered my love of this tree and got one for me. We will have to keep a careful eye on this little guy as it can form a hybrid with burr oaks, one of which we have in our front yard. I was going to head out to admire and water it, but right now, it is raining cats and dogs. Our rain barrels will be full again! As will our neighbor’s car, whose windows are partially down. I did try knocking on your door, John!

It’s amazing to me that a tree can bring such joy.  I work at Ohio State, and with all of the construction around Bricker Hall, I have to get into the building from the side that faces the Oval. I just love walking under the trees, most of them fairly large, although a few new ones have been added in. There is one, a sycamore (another one of my favorites; I love the bark) that was around in 1776. If only it could talk. There is another special tree that I never knew about after attending OSU for four years and working there for another 11. It’s a lovely oak tree planted in memory of a soldier who was killed in France in 1944. Since I have studied World War II history, I asked the archivist at Ohio State about the tree, and he managed to find me a picture of the young man who was killed. (Sorry, the photo’s on my computer at work.) Neither of us has been able to discover why this particular soldier had a tree planted in his honor. Not that there needs to be a reason; in my mind, they all deserve a tree in their name for everything that they have done.

Well, I am going to sit out on the front porch for a little while; the lightning has let up, and I love hearing the distance rumble of thunder and the rain falling down. I’m certain that the temperature will have dropped with the storm, too. The air will be fresh and sweet smelling.

Don’t forget the clean up in the ravine tomorrow. All this rain should make for easy pulling of the invasive plants! And Pete is famous, having had a front page article in The Booster with his name in it (granted, under the fold) about the clean up. Details are: Saturday, July 30, from 9 – 3. Meet in Glen Echo Park beneath the Indianola Avenue bridge. There’s a map at www.FriendsOfTheRavines.org/

Until next time!