Florida Tree Chaos: Keeping the Trees but Going Solar

Protecting the Environment

I love our Florida live oak trees with their shade and graceful beauty. I love that they provide food and shelter to the birds and squirrels in the ‘hood. Protecting the trees while also protecting the environment is my goal.

I know that at times of the year, the trees are messy. If you want an immaculate green garden, you must be prepared for falling leaves and pollen. See: Spring in Florida is Messy!

The live oak tree overhanging the backyard has dropped most, but not all, of its pollen. The live oak tree in our front yard, however, is still flowering and dropping pollen. They are on slightly different schedules.

The live oak tree in the front yard is also different from every other live oak in the area in that it sends up a large number of sprouts from the roots. There is a constant mini-forest growing under the tree. A neighbor who has lived here in this neighborhood since the houses were built told me that this tree was different from the others from the beginning.

I do all of the gardening and clean up in the backyard but we have a contract with a gardening group to do some maintenance for the front yard. They mow the grass and our mini-oak forest sprouts, but they also blow away the fallen leaves, cut sprouts, and pollen. They are extremely conscientious. Today it is messier and noisier than usual.

This morning they spent 2 hours mowing and then blowing the fallen leaves and pollen from the garden into the street. Then, they bag everything, including the leaves and pollen in the street. They filled another 4 large bags with leaves and pollen that will be picked up by the local yard waste collection tomorrow.

That is only half of what is happening in the garden today. After weeks of negotiation, we have signed a contract to install solar panels on our roof. We believe in solar panels. We each need to do what we can to help to sustain the environment.

I refused to remove trees but the backyard oak tree is being trimmed, so there will be more sunlight falling on our roof.

The tree-trimming group of workers cut a hole in the wood fence to get equipment into the backyard area. We will replace the fence next week. We need a fence enclosing the backyard so the dogs have a place to hang out during the day, but we will replace this fence with one with a door on this side, so it is easier to access the area for the work that needs to be done maintaining the trees and the solar panels.

To get ready for this process, I had to move several plants that were in front of this section of the fence. The solar panel people will need access to the backyard too, so I moved my blueberry bushes to the side garden, and I dug up my lemon grass and potted it. Then I trimmed some other plants so they wouldn’t be damaged or in the way of their work.

They carefully cut, trimmed, and carried out the branches. They even raked up more leaves and pollen as they cleaned up in the backyard. Then they nailed the fence piece back on so there is a temporary fix in place. The dogs need their backyard, you know.

The solar panels will go on the slanted section of the roof on this side. There is another section of the house in front that is sunny and it will have solar panels too.

Next, we need to have our electric panel replaced with a newer one to manage the electricity that will be produced by the solar panels.

What a lot of work and expense to install solar panels, but we are doing what we can to try to help save the environment. We live in sunny Florida, the Sunshine State, so we will use our roof to help generate the electricity we use.