The parkway August 25

The last entry today is about the front garden. Perhaps I can get Jane to take some pretty pictures of it. It is hard to do that. The front, or parkway as we call it in Chicago, has been torn up and is in the process of coming back. It will take years.

The first sign of trouble in the front was when we had the sewer contractor put a clean-out into the sewer. This tore up a small area of the front and left a small mound of clay and garbage dirt. That was in November, 2006. In late January 2007, a city main to the house broke when the temperatures plunged.

So many mains broke in the city that there was trouble trying to repair them and our water break wasn’t given the priority of other problems.

So it froze the street. Jane, we need a picture of the frozen cars here, it will help people remember that it isn’t always this hot.

About two inches of water slowly spread from the main to the houses on each side for several lots, and also into the street. Cars parked in front of our house became encased in several inches of ice and could not be moved for several weeks. And a large area became unusable by vehicles due to the ice. You could get your car in, but the ice would grow around it overnight and you couldn’t get out without a tow truck.

Anyway, that created a big hole in the parkway about ten feet from the sewer clean-out. The city came by and inspected the four story tree in front of the house and removed it. They said the sewer and water work had torn its roots and it could come down in a high wind. Now there was another hole.

The loss of the sugar maple, it was about 45 years old according to some kids who counted the rings, was heart breaking. We had loved the color of the reflected light streaming through our windows in the evening. Now, our windows were open to the street lamp and noise of the street too.

One of our dreams was to complete our attic, leaving a French window in the front that we could open to the tree. That is all gone now.

However, the surviving firewood from the tree burns slow and has a wonderful smell.

In the summer the city came by and put a dinky little hedge maple in the hole left by the tree. We never loved that tree and knew it wouldn’t last. It was felled when our water contractor upgraded the building water supply and did more work on the sewer line. Good bye hedge maple, hello three more holes.

That was last winter. We contacted the city to request another tree, this time making a specific request for an Accolade Elm. This is a relative of the elm trees that were famous in this area, until they were killed by Dutch elm disease. I thought that it would be nice to be the first house on the block to have an elm again.

While we are waiting for the elm, the gas utility company has done more work on the parkway, putting new service in one area and removing it from another. Two more holes.

Yesterday I worked on the parkway, gathering the clay, bricks, cement, rocks and junk that had been dumped there over the years by contractors, and unearthed by all these efforts. I pushed it to the center of the parkway and hoped the city or the gas utility would take it away.

The pile ended up being about three foot high and about three foot around. That’s a lot of earth coming from a patch of parkway only about 6’ by 30’. I went out and purchased about $200 of rock and about $250 of plants and started work.

The neighbors say it looks nice. It will take years to know for sure.

I think that the parkway has become a metaphor for the things that can go wrong in life and also how life can survive and grow. Of course, left to its own devices, the parkway would be a weed patch. In fact it was a weed patch for most of the summer as we waited for the utility to complete its work.

The parkway is never going to be perfect and maybe it will never be complete. It is a growing thing, complicated by the salt in the street, the passage of pedestrians and dogs over it and its use to access the building for the sewer, water and gas. But it should look beautiful in a few years. I can see where it is headed and have faith in my vision of how it will look.