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There was the time Lynn Griffiths found four small boys in her backyard tree, near the north end of Rochester Street. The tree was a towering old eastern cottonwood. The boys were bad boys.
“I had just bought the house. I was single and I came home one day and there were a bunch of kids in the tree,” she recalled this week. She didn’t know any of them.
They had taken apart her clothes-drying rack and ripped some pickets off her fence and nailed the pieces on the tree to build steps up its trunk, “and they were building themselves a fort in the tree.”
She told them to come down, worried that someone would fall, and was startled when a 10-year-old boy told her to eff off, lady: “This is God’s tree, not yours.”
“This was a pretty tough neighbourhood in 1980,” she says. She told the boys: “Oh really? Well, God planted it in my backyard.”
It finally took a police officer to talk them down and march them home. He also had them return the pickets and fix the fence, she said. “And I use the word ‘fix’ loosely.”
All that was in 1980. Now the tallest tree in LeBreton Flats, and one of the tallest in Ottawa, is about to be cut down. Neighbours will hold a wake for it Saturday.
Lynn Griffiths’ tree seen rising up behind homes on Rochester Street.
Lynn Griffiths’ tree has been calculated at 115 feet tall, about 11 storeys.
As cottonwoods age, they become brittle, and as neighbours have worried about the chance of falling branches, Griffiths has agreed that, given the tree’s great age, this is the time to take it down. It could happen as early as next week.
“It was planted by an Irishman, and I wanted to have the wake while it was still alive as a celebration,” she said. St. Patrick’s Day seemed the logical choice.
“The tree was here before any of us.”
A house stood at 63 Rochester in the late 1800s, but the Great Fire of 1900 swept it away, along with the rest of the neighbourhood. The owner, a railway engineer named Michael Doherty, rebuilt within seven months — using brick this time for the first brick house on the street.
Rochester is all brick now, and you can see the big cottonwood swaying gently if you peer down lanes between these old homes or look out and up from back windows. It divides low down into about five massive branches, each the size of a good-sized tree trunk. It waves its thin upper branches like giant arms, and just now they are covered with buds waiting for spring.
Cottonwoods are native to this area, though they always grow along riverbanks, not inland. One rumour is that this tree may be one of many donated by the United States after the fire, or it could have been transplanted from beside the Ottawa River, a short distance away.
Related
“The tree has been assessed as at least 115 years old. If you do the math, it means he planted it sometime post-fire,” likely about 1901, she said.
“I’ve lived in this house since 1980, and I’ve been looking after this tree since 1980.
Now the tree is as old as any cottonwood can expect to become. “The only thing we can do is give it a good send-off.”
A wake for the tree will be held this weekend.
The whole neighbourhood knows her cottonwood.
“There’s a gentleman who lives on Primrose who told me he learned to play darts against that tree when he was a little boy,” she said.
That man is John Fling, who has lived on Primrose since 1956. Even then the tree was enormous, he said. Each time he looks out his back window or steps into the driveway, the tree is high above him, and it has been that way for 62 years.
“You just take it for granted” because it is so familiar, he said. “It’s there. There’s nothing real special. It’s just there, and you notice it.
“I’ll miss it when it’s gone because it’s such a great tree.”
And a young woman who heard the tree will be cut stopped Griffiths in the street this week. “She told me that tree saved her life.”
The woman had moved into the neighbourhood as a single mother and faced bullying.
“She said, ‘I could either look into the part of the neighbourhood where the bullying was taking place or turn away from it and look out the window at the tree. So I looked at the tree.’
“You never know, you never know, how a tree is going to affect people. And you can see this tree from Gatineau.”
Neighbour Sasha McLean, a full block away, calls it “a gift of love to the city.”
“My daughter calls it the Shimmer Tree, and has since she was five.”
Like all members of the poplar family, cottonwoods have leaves that tremble in a light breeze, “and it’s like a spangled dress. Also all the starlings in the neighbourhood like to come and sit in it and chat with one another, and they are so iridescent. So the leaves spangle and the starlings shimmer and chatter, and that tree is large and generous of spirit, and it will be very sad when it comes down.
“I love that she’s having a wake for the tree. It’s really a love story: woman and tree, and tree and neighbourhood.”
“The tree and the neighbourhood grew up together,” Griffiths said.
“I raised my children in this house. I had my wedding pictures taken against the tree,” in 1984. (Her three boys were forbidden to build a tree fort.)
Her cottonwood even survived the ice storm of 1998 while losing only one small branch, she recalled.
“This tree is a survivor. It just is.”
Lynn Griffiths is the owner of a cottonwood tree in the back yard of 63 Rochester St. Due to it’s age, 118 years, and condition, it will be cut down in the next few days.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
“I had just bought the house. I was single and I came home one day and there were a bunch of kids in the tree,” she recalled this week. She didn’t know any of them.
They had taken apart her clothes-drying rack and ripped some pickets off her fence and nailed the pieces on the tree to build steps up its trunk, “and they were building themselves a fort in the tree.”
She told them to come down, worried that someone would fall, and was startled when a 10-year-old boy told her to eff off, lady: “This is God’s tree, not yours.”
“This was a pretty tough neighbourhood in 1980,” she says. She told the boys: “Oh really? Well, God planted it in my backyard.”
It finally took a police officer to talk them down and march them home. He also had them return the pickets and fix the fence, she said. “And I use the word ‘fix’ loosely.”
All that was in 1980. Now the tallest tree in LeBreton Flats, and one of the tallest in Ottawa, is about to be cut down. Neighbours will hold a wake for it Saturday.
Lynn Griffiths’ tree seen rising up behind homes on Rochester Street.
Lynn Griffiths’ tree has been calculated at 115 feet tall, about 11 storeys.
As cottonwoods age, they become brittle, and as neighbours have worried about the chance of falling branches, Griffiths has agreed that, given the tree’s great age, this is the time to take it down. It could happen as early as next week.
“It was planted by an Irishman, and I wanted to have the wake while it was still alive as a celebration,” she said. St. Patrick’s Day seemed the logical choice.
“The tree was here before any of us.”
A house stood at 63 Rochester in the late 1800s, but the Great Fire of 1900 swept it away, along with the rest of the neighbourhood. The owner, a railway engineer named Michael Doherty, rebuilt within seven months — using brick this time for the first brick house on the street.
Rochester is all brick now, and you can see the big cottonwood swaying gently if you peer down lanes between these old homes or look out and up from back windows. It divides low down into about five massive branches, each the size of a good-sized tree trunk. It waves its thin upper branches like giant arms, and just now they are covered with buds waiting for spring.
Cottonwoods are native to this area, though they always grow along riverbanks, not inland. One rumour is that this tree may be one of many donated by the United States after the fire, or it could have been transplanted from beside the Ottawa River, a short distance away.
Related
“The tree has been assessed as at least 115 years old. If you do the math, it means he planted it sometime post-fire,” likely about 1901, she said.
“I’ve lived in this house since 1980, and I’ve been looking after this tree since 1980.
Now the tree is as old as any cottonwood can expect to become. “The only thing we can do is give it a good send-off.”
A wake for the tree will be held this weekend.
The whole neighbourhood knows her cottonwood.
“There’s a gentleman who lives on Primrose who told me he learned to play darts against that tree when he was a little boy,” she said.
That man is John Fling, who has lived on Primrose since 1956. Even then the tree was enormous, he said. Each time he looks out his back window or steps into the driveway, the tree is high above him, and it has been that way for 62 years.
“You just take it for granted” because it is so familiar, he said. “It’s there. There’s nothing real special. It’s just there, and you notice it.
“I’ll miss it when it’s gone because it’s such a great tree.”
And a young woman who heard the tree will be cut stopped Griffiths in the street this week. “She told me that tree saved her life.”
The woman had moved into the neighbourhood as a single mother and faced bullying.
“She said, ‘I could either look into the part of the neighbourhood where the bullying was taking place or turn away from it and look out the window at the tree. So I looked at the tree.’
“You never know, you never know, how a tree is going to affect people. And you can see this tree from Gatineau.”
Neighbour Sasha McLean, a full block away, calls it “a gift of love to the city.”
“My daughter calls it the Shimmer Tree, and has since she was five.”
Like all members of the poplar family, cottonwoods have leaves that tremble in a light breeze, “and it’s like a spangled dress. Also all the starlings in the neighbourhood like to come and sit in it and chat with one another, and they are so iridescent. So the leaves spangle and the starlings shimmer and chatter, and that tree is large and generous of spirit, and it will be very sad when it comes down.
“I love that she’s having a wake for the tree. It’s really a love story: woman and tree, and tree and neighbourhood.”
“The tree and the neighbourhood grew up together,” Griffiths said.
“I raised my children in this house. I had my wedding pictures taken against the tree,” in 1984. (Her three boys were forbidden to build a tree fort.)
Her cottonwood even survived the ice storm of 1998 while losing only one small branch, she recalled.
“This tree is a survivor. It just is.”
Lynn Griffiths is the owner of a cottonwood tree in the back yard of 63 Rochester St. Due to it’s age, 118 years, and condition, it will be cut down in the next few days.
tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
