The Trees of Wessyngton Road

My understanding of neighborhood history is that our street, Wessyngton Road, was a late addition to Morningside. Much of the neighborhood dates to the 1920s, but not Wessyngton Road – our street was built around 1950, and that’s when the older homes on the street were built. There’s been some newer construction too, and of course now some of the 1950s houses are being purchased, torn down, and replaced with Large Houses that are Architecturally Different from Adjacent Houses (LHADAHs).

I am not sure when the oak trees – the tall, massive oaks that still stand in a few places on our street – were planted, but they are old, and many of them are at the end of their life. They might have died anyway, but the unfriendly urban environment and drought are definitely taking their toll. One fell over, blocking the street, a couple of months ago; others have been removed to make way for LHADAHs. There briefly was a stop work order, over tree issues, at one of the LHADAHs up the street, but they ended up removing the trees and continuing the construction. Now there’s an orange sign in front of another house, announcing that trees are going to be removed – presumably to allow another LHADAH to be built.

When I bought this house, there was one oak tree in the front yard, and a stump where another one had been cut down by the former owner. It was 13 or 14 years ago that one day half the leaves on the remaining one just turned brown. The tree was dying and the only question was would we get it taken down before it fell over.

Tom wanted to replace it with a gingko, and we went to a large tree farm and picked one out. This was when Sarah was a baby, and I remember that Tom had her in a backpack – it was there that she said her first word, or at least the first one we understood (“duck” – the noun, as opposed to the verb). Tom wanted a gingko because an arborist had recommended it, as a tree that could stand the tough life in the city. It was supposed to be a male tree, since female gingkos make fruit (“the fruit smells like cat vomit,” Tom told me helpfully).

I guess determining the gender of gingko trees is an inexact art, because a few years later our tree started making fruit (surprise!) but it really doesn’t smell like cat vomit; the only real problem is that we have to continually clear out the small gingko trees from underneath, or otherwise our front yard will become a gingko forest. It is now a tall tree, as tall as our house, and in the fall the leaves turn bright yellow. But it doesn’t make shade the way the old oak tree did; I wish we still had an oak tree that would shade the house and the asphalt and help keep things cooler in the summer.

Some of the houses on Wessyngton have no trees at all. The LHADAH that is on the market now – the one that they are asking $1.3 million for – has two small maple trees in the tiny front yard. They may grow to be beautiful trees, and provide wonderful scarlet color in the fall, but they will never shade the street. They took trees out to build the LHADAH next to it, and on the other side is that orange sign.

When we were walking the dog this morning, Tom said we need more trees on our street. A few weeks ago, Trees Atlanta hosted a workshop to teach people how to plan a neighborhood tree planting event; I would have liked to have gone, but that was the weekend of the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage, and I didn't go *anywhere.* Maybe next year.