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Day 27: A Tale of Two Cities
Yesterday’s planting was at Butler University. It was both one of the easiest and one of the most difficult plantings I have had. The tree was a Skyline Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos).
Difficult Portion: Its root ball was in a 25 gallon bucket. The reality was it probably should have been in about a 35 or 40 gallon bucket…it was a pretty big tree. It needed the bigger bucket because the soil had become incredibly compacted and the roots were circling like crazy. Andrew and I must have spent 30 minutes trying to saw through the roots to given them a better chance to expand outwards.
Easy Portion: Butler essentially rolled out the red carpet for Andrew and I. We were replacing a tree that had died, so they made sure to pull out the old root ball and churn up all the dirt before we got there. There was a perfectly round section of top soil when we arrived. It took me about 5 minutes to empty it out. The consistency of the dirt was almost like what you would find in a sand box. This was hands down the easiest hole to dig.
That is really all I have to say today about the planting, because there is a different experience / observation I wanted to relay. I drove down Meridian on my way to Butler, and had to spend about 1 mile being confined to just 1 lane because of construction. The city was rebuilding some of the curb along Meridian and putting in a sidewalk. My first reaction was, awesome! Meridian is the main thoroughfare of our city. It has beautiful houses, beautiful trees, and I was excited about the sidewalk that would make it a more walking / bicycling friends area. Then a few things jumped into my head.
I thought back to a conversation I had with Morris Schefcik. Morris has been the person I worked with to coordinate the plantings in Little Flower. He has spearheaded improving the tree canopy there and is personally taking care of many of the new trees across the neighborhood. He also has told me about his struggles to get the city to come to his neighborhood and improve his sidewalks. Then my mind flashed to Shirley from the planting my firm did on the near east side. There was no curb in front of her house and the sidewalk was falling apart.
I started to reconcile the construction project I saw on Meridian to the need of Shirley’s neighborhood. I then thought back to how the roads in my neighborhood on the Northeast side of Indianapolis had recently been redone. I was very excited when that project was happening, but that was then. As a democrat leaning resident of the city, I have been pleasantly surprised with the mayors green initiatives; it was a concern of mine when he was elected. He has consistently been one of KIB’s biggest champions, and for that I am amazingly grateful. I also have been supportive of how he has raised money to pour into our cities infrastructure. Road improvements and sidewalks make our city better, but did my neighborhood really need the improvements? Where was the bigger need, Meridian and 62nd or at Temple and New York?
Hopefully we will see some of the infrastructure improvements trickle into the neighborhoods that need it the most. Perhaps that is part of the master plan for how the money is being spent
The opinions in this blog...and all of the others I have written have been mine. They have not been endorsed and may not be shared by the staff or management of KIB.
