2003-10-23-12:37 a.m.
We met the arborist at the house yesterday and he was really impressed with our tree collection, which is vast. We have several crab apples, several Norway maples, a weeping cherry, a Japanese cherry, a dogwood, three spruce, a lady something or other, two red buds, a gum of some sort, a sycamore, an alder and some other stuff. The lady something or other is being overcrowded so I'm going to attempt to move her elsewhere in the spring.

We also have a whole clump of miscellaneous shrubbery stuff in the center of the backyard. Anyhow, it's actually all baby trees. Two more red buds, a few maples, and a lilac. Very bizarre.

The arborist was really amazed. He said someone who owned the house in the past was really into trees and picked out a lot of nice ones to place along the back but then they weren't taken care of. The owners before us put up a 6 foot privacy fence in the backyard but we own 10 feet of property behind the fence which is the area that's dense with trees. We'll probably move the fence back at some point and "reclaim" our property. I'm sure it will be kind of a pain though with all the trees.

The arborist is going to come back and chop down a gigantic spruce and a crab apple. In the spring, we'll have the maples groomed/thinned. They're not in good shape now. Previous owners hacked off branches really badly and they also have a bad case of a tar spot or something. There's nothing you can do about it though except rake up the leaves to limit the chance of infection next year.

Anyhow, all this got me thinking about the past owners of the property. I was stunned when I saw our title. It's HUGE!!!. It's about a 2-inch thick stack of documents. The property was first a plot on a subdivided farm back in the 1850's. I expect there was once another house on the property before ours, which was built in 1942 or 48. I forgot. Based on the thickness of the title, I can't imagine that the lot sat empty for almost a 100 years before our house was built. It's strange to think of all the people that were there before us and what they might've visualized for the property. Looking at the title kind of freaked me out. I felt my mortality really heavily.

My stepfather pointed out that we have such a big lot for the area. We could sell off half of it for another house if we wanted. I think that's probably true but I don't know if I'd want to do that. I've thought about building a small guest house out back at some point though. I love guest houses. They're fairly common in Tucson but not up here.

911
My mother was keeping Ro boy on Monday and got a surprise visit from the sheriff. It turns out Ro boy dialed 911 while playing with the phone. He didn't actually hit the numbers but he hit a button that says POLICE at the top of the phone. My mom thought that was something she had to program into the phone. She didn't know it automatically dialed 911. She didn't get a ticket or anything though. He just said he was glad nothing was wrong.

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