Wood Chips

With the new sidewalk in place, I started thinking about whether I could do anything to make the area around our big tree a bit nicer.  One day, while wandering around the neighborhood, my son noticed a toy helicopter lying on the ground near a tree.  He started playing with it.  About 3 minutes later, the property owner came out and asked us to move because she was going to put wood chips down around the tree.  She wasn't rude about it, and even surprisingly offered to let my son keep the helicopter.  We didn't keep the helicopter.  But the wood chips seemed like a good way to solve my tree-related question.

Before:

During:

  It took about five large bags of chips to surround the tree.