80-Year-Old Cedar on Cleveland Avenue Tells UH's Family History
Our University Heights home on Cleveland Avenue was built in 1927 according to the County Recorder’s Office. Our understanding is that Marine Colonel Parrot had it built.
Shortly after we moved in, Colonel Parrot’s daughter stopped by to ask if she could revisit the home she grew up in and shared some interesting historical tidbits about the property. Two or three years later, members of the Bliss family dropped by and requested a visit to their childhood home. (The Bliss family bought the home from the Parrot family in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s.) We learned more historical information from them, and they told us about how they rode horses in Mission Valley, sometimes riding them into the backyard for a break.
Laurie Casper brought her mother, Jane Bliss, to visit us in August 2022. They reminisced about her childhood days in UH. Guess what? Jane’s brother, Jim, and Jane’s future husband, Edwin Dyer, planted what is now our cedar tree back in 1946! The tree is 80 years old now. Bliss left us a picture of herself at age 17, swinging out over Mission Valley at the cliffs’ edge on Golden Gate Drive and Cleveland Avenue. She later married Edwin and moved out of UH in 1951. The home was sold and changed hands several times with multiple tenants. Thirty years later, Lynne and I came along.
We rented the house in September 1981. The owner, A.C. Stewart, was a fine gentleman who made us an offer we couldn’t refuse in 1983 to buy the property. Lynne and I were married in the backyard, and over the years, we have raised our children and celebrated many family events.
The cedar tree in the front yard has always been the star of the show, but we never really did anything special for it until recently. In late 2021, we completely revamped the front yard, with the cedar tree as the main focus. After the landscaping was done, we hired renowned arborist Kurt Peacock to check out the tree’s health. Peacock told us to get rid of the grass and sprinklers around the tree because direct water on the trunk isn’t good for it. Peacock also gave us some great advice to install a Netafim drip irrigation system and put wood chips around the tree to help it thrive.
This past fall was crazy! There were hundreds of cones on the ground and hundreds still on the tree. We’ve never seen anything like it in over 44 years of living here. We were worried, so we asked Kurt Peacock, who said, “In times of stress, reproduction conifers can be reduced in amount or frequency. A big bloom means the tree is happy.” We’re thrilled! It seems like the tree is healthier than ever. We hope this tree and our house will have a long and happy life together; however, there is a dark cloud on the horizon now: Zone Zero! This new law may impact our cedar tree, but we’ll have to wait until the regulations are finalized to know for sure.