DIY problem solving

Last summer, when I had an arborist out to deal with a huge dead branch on the silver maple in the back, he pointed out that the lawn care folks' weed whipper was scarring the trunk of an ash tree in the front. He suggested I lay down mulch around the base of the tree, to stop things from growing so they wouldn't need to do that.

So this spring, I determined a reasonable diameter, calculated square footage, and hied off to Menards for ten bags of mulch and some edging to contain it. I then marked the perimeter with six garden stakes and spent an hour with a mattock taking off the grass, trying not to cut through the surface-level roots of the tree. Fortunately, this was April, and it wasn't too hot out.

At that point I found out that the edging needed some stakes I hadn't been aware of, and was told by a helpful neighbor that I should also lay down some sort of mesh that would stop weeds from growing up through the mulch. After more thought, I decided I wanted to use some sort of brick instead of edging (the edging would have to be dug deeper into the sod, again hurting the surface roots), piled the mulch bags in the garage, and made a shopping list for pavers and mesh for the next trip to Menards.

And so the problem sat for the last two months. (Yard work is not how I care to spend my spare time.) This morning, the lawn maintenance crew arrived while I was fetching the paper. I saw an opportunity and decided to solve the problem another way:

I asked them not to hit the tree with their whipper.