We moved to Clatskanie in the summer of 2023 (more about this here), going from being life-long suburbanites to living on two out-in-the-country acres.
The biggest change we made to our new place after we moved in was to plant trees along the western edge along the road. We did this for several reasons.
First, with almost no trees on the western edge of the property, the sun beating down on the yard in the summer was relentless. In our first summer here, several of the ferns on the east side of the yard were killed in that heat. Some shade in the summer sure would be nice!
Next, the majority of our trees are mature Western Red Cedars, which have been suffering due to the heating of the climate. We have three huge dead Cedars on our property, and several more that are in the process of dying. The dead trees made me feel an urgency to plant new ones.
Finally, while I find the view from our front porch to be beautiful, still, it is a view of the road and of our neighbor’s house. Not seeing other people’s houses was high on our wish list when we were shopping for a home. Don’t get me wrong: We really like our neighbors and they have a lovely house on a lovely hill (and their garden is impressive!), but after living all those years in the ’burbs surrounded by the homes of our close-by neighbors, it would just be so nice to just see trees.
So we planted ten trees — a combination of Douglas Fir and Giant Sequoia: eight along the road and two at the other side of the property nearer to the dead trees. They are very young, but not mere saplings: the tallest one is about 7 feet tall.
It will be years before they create the shade for the yard and the privacy from the road that we’re looking for, but it will be nice to watch them grow. The photo below was taken shortly after they were planted.
I admit the sunsets above the neighbor’s house are lovely and when the new trees are fully mature that view will be obscured, but I still think we made the right choice.
My sister-in-law, Pat, says that when you plant new trees they sleep the first year, creep the next, then leap in the third year. So I don’t expect to see too much change in these guys until 2027.
I’ll keep updating this with photos as they grow.