Tree Hugging

I’ve always loved trees. When we started looking at this house, we knew we had to have them since there were none to begin with included with the land.

We looked into it pretty thoroughly and decided we wanted quite a few fruit trees and a Japanese Red Maple. Wal-Mart was pretty cruddy with their selection and their quality was pretty poor for what they did have (imagine that) so we decided to bank on Lowe’s. Lowe’s had an amazing variety of everything from shrubs to trees to perennials to vegetables. Fruit tree selection was up first.

there was a Crooked man who had a Crooked tree

Unfortunately, most fruit trees were not self pollinating, meaning we would need two of each to allow the cross pollination required for fruit. Our yard did not have the space for the 6 to 8 trees it would take to give us a couple of each kind so that was a bit of a damper. No plum, no pear I wanted a plum too, it was my main pick. Maybe later… So we ended up getting a Nectarine for me and a yellow delicious apple for Marla.

pluck yourself

Then came the Japanese Red Maple decision. The most difficult part was to buy a large one or a small one. Ultimately I went for the small one because it was lower in price and I figured it would be more interesting to watch it grow from a smaller tree rather than one that was already 5 feet high. Bloodgood is the type. It looked the most elegant from the pictures. The leaves were the most jagged and the branches twisted in a bonsai-like fashion. It’’s spiral shape is pretty enthralling…U.s.u.m.a.k.e…

Yggdrasil, the sun scorched

The trees were meant to planted within a couple weeks of purchasing them. We still lived in our apartment complex then. We were worried that the cream of the crop would get sold out by the time we moved and could transplant them immediately into the ground (btw, they did sell out). We put them on our old balcony and made sure to watch the Titties (our cats) if they went out there as it was their favourite passtime to eat bugs and plants outdoors when we weren”t looking.

They held up pretty well while they were out there. Then, at the last minute of our 2 week wait to move, they bumped our closing back 2 weeks. No big deal, we just had to let the trees sit in pots for longer. I think the fruit trees got sick from it, their leaves got yellow moldy spots and some of the bark got freckled with white.

We were so worn out with moving that we didn”t plant them for the first few weeks of living here. The Maple sat on the front porch and the fruit trees in the back yard. The back yard turned out a little smaller than we remembered thanks to the neighbors putting up a wire fence for their dog which wasn’t there when we first looked at everything. It looked bigger when the two yards were smooth across with no division. But, no worries, there happened to be a red maple like tree already shooting up near the spot Marla had originally landscaped on paper for mine so we’ve left that there and moved my Maple to the front.

unkempt possible Japanese Red Maple

The poor trees did show some wear and tear from being potted for so long without the good transplant. The Japanese Bloodgood got sun scorched and most of the leaves shrivelled up into crispy nothingness. The apple tree lost most of it’s leaves, and what was left turned yellow-brown. The nectarine wilted but kept it’s leaves. But they’re all happy in the ground now. We’ve babied the crap out of them. Nice deep waterings, we’ve dug them ditches for water to sit in to keep them moist throughout some of the day. We’ve also begun composting grass clippings to use as natural nutrient mulch for them. The apple and Bloodgood are pulling out of their stupor with new branchings of leaves. The nectarine has perked up but it’s harder to notice new shoots on that one since it never dropped anything. I’ll post updated pictures of them every so often.

~ by redredjeremy on August 14, 2008.