What’s happening here (ever notice that most of my posts about my neighbors begin this way? It’s because even I wonder that sometimes!)
This has been a saga! This knoll that you see began as an evergreen covered hill last spring. My neighbor spent weeks (actually the folks he hired did!) with tree companies first taking down almost all the trees, then re-grading the hillside (from Memorial Day until July 4th with a grader–it takes a lot of patience to live in my neighborhood sometimes!)
His house has the opposite problem from mine. I am on a hill. His sits in a hollow. While I slid down my driveway all last winter, he had an ice rink at the bottom of his driveway. He hopes that by changing the grade and removing trees, he can get some sun on his driveway and parking area so that he can won’t endanger his life.
I’m skeptical. I know how low the sun is in the winter. But I hope he’s right because I hate for all those trees to have been lost in vain.
Then he seeded the lawn–in mid July. But unfortunately, as you can see by this vast expanse, there’s a lot to water. And no one did. Irrigation went in but not until at least a month later. So when it was turned on, you guessed it, crab grass and other undesirable stuff came up.
So now my neighbor is on his second application of what I presume is glysophate–I pray it’s nothing worse than that–to kill everything that’s there. As you can see by the lovely green stripes in my photo, even after a month without rain, and 2 applications of herbicide, grass is hard to kill.
There is a dogwood in the middle of the lawn that appears to be succumbing to something–probably months of constant bulldozing nearby, I’m guessing! I’d guess the remaining trees are going to suffer a similar fate.
And this house is next to the one that is on the market–the one with the apple tree that is shedding its branches. That property has a maple that’s doing the same, sadly. It’s been a tough summer.
Gardendaze 
My neighbors house sits above mine and after they cleared over 30 trees, our home developed new water problems. People don’t realize just how many thousands of gallons of water trees hold and once they’re gone, people like your neighbor suffer water pooling at the bottom of his driveway. Such a pity.
Also, herbicides do kill trees as well. I wonder if that poor dogwood was overdosed. I wish chemicals were banned! There are so many solutions other than chemicals.
Thanks for another interesting post.
Oh, I am sorry to hear about your water woes.
You are quite correct that herbicides kill trees. I watched a lovely weeping cherry succumb to nutsedge treatment.(Yet another neighbor who had to have perfection, with crazy consequences. ) Folks don’t realize what the heck they’re doing — they think weed killer is “harmless. ”
I wouldn’t doubt the weed killer played a part in the dogwood’s demise. But our exceptionally dry summer, coupled with that bulldozer running over its roots for weeks on end, has to have been equally culpable.
He took a lovely understory tree, made it the center of a lawn, ran a bulldozer over it for weeks, and then doused it with chemicals–twice. I think I would up and die at that point too!
Thanks for your points. And I totally agree. Let’s get rid of some of these chemicals!
Karla
My favorite way to get rid of grass used to be to kneel down with a hand fork, lift up each section of turf, knock all the top soil off the underside, toss away piece of turf/roots, dig up next section, repeat. It took forever but at least I didn’t lose the topsoil and didn’t use any chemicals. That was before (maybe resulted in??) the bad back and bad knee. Not an option anymore, so my only resort is herbicidal.
It should be interesting at the next house because I plan to get rid of ALL the grass and replace with gravel paths and planting beds…. am refusing to think about that until the time arises, LOL
Gardening gets so much more “interesting ” as we get older, doesn’t it? I am watching with mild amusement as the flood of books come out catering to aging gardeners. Each of us has to figure it out for ourselves, I think. And so far, the advice I have seen in those books hasn’t seemed very promising.
Your “Scarlet O’Hara” (“I’ll think about it tomorrow “) approach seems as good as any I’ve heard.
Karla