"Junior"

 As I reported here in this blog, back in August of last year, we sadly had to say goodbye to the mature pine tree that we fell in love with when we bought our house.  The arborist that had removed the tree came back in the fall to plant a replacement.

I will admit, we had a bit of a scare after "Junior" had been planted.   We started seeing lots of yellow needles and dropped needles.  For a while, we feared that we'd have to cash-in on the one-year guarantee that the arborist offered and get yet another tree.  We worried was it not getting enough water, was it getting too much?  

As my husband was watering it one day, from the faucet at the back of the house, something suddenly came to me.   We have a water treatment system installed and it was connected specifically behind the water connection for the sprinkler system and the faucet at the front of the house, so it didn't affect those water outlets.  But all the other faucets around the house were supplied via the treatment system.  Great if we wanted to drink clean water right out of the faucet, or have lots of suds when washing the car, not so good for watering plants because the natural mineral content of our water had been altered.

I mentioned this to my husband and from that point on, we started watering "Junior" either from the rain barrel, or from the faucet at the front of the house.

  
 I'm happy to report that "Junior" is doing very well.  The needles stopped turning yellow almost immediately after the change and this spring, it's vigorously putting out candles of new growth.

Of course, "Junior" has a long way to grow--it's currently about 20 feet tall, nowhere near the 80 ft + of the original tree. We just have to be a little patient. According to historic aerial photos of our area on Google Earth, there weren't any trees here about 35 years ago - it was farmland.

So yes, we just have to be patient, although the local bird population is eyeing it up already :-)

 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

R.I.P. Pine Tree -- A Sad Tale

I think I've mentioned many times before on this blog that the reason we selected this particular lot to have our home built on was the mature pine tree in the back yard, as well as the little "forest" on the outside of the wall.

The builder did the "ribbon survey" and the tree was comfortably outside the line and could therefore be kept.  Or that was the plan, anyway.

But from that moment on, things started going downhill for that tree.

Before we even chose the lot, the developers put the wall in.  On the homeowner's side of the wall, about 5 feet from it, a trench was dug for utilities -- phone, cable etc. -- right through the tree roots.

And then once our lot was selected, the builder took over and bulldozers drove back and forth,  digging out the foundation and then grading the lot. I don't know whether some builders are more careful in preserving trees than others but ours apparently didn't give them a thought.

We didn't realize it at the time, but the bulldozers were crushing all the tree roots and even by the time they had installed the sprinklers and laid the sod, the tree had a death sentence pinned on it.

Within a few months we realized the tree just didn't look as nice as it once had.  It had millions of pine cones and not so many needles as it had.

Things didn't go well for our little forest outside the wall either.  They too had been stressed by the building of the wall and the laying of utilities right through their root zones.  Then Hurricane Ike further weakened them so that, one by one, they succumbed to pine bark beetles or some other disease and died. 

We consulted an arborist to find out why our tree wasn't thriving and what could be done about it.  That's when we learned that the tree appeared to be suffering from stress caused by damage to the roots from the bulldozers. They said they saw it a lot in wooded areas that had recently been built on.

At first they were guardedly optimistic and offered lots of practical ways in which we could try and improve matters.  They did some deep root fertilization and a deep core aeration to try and loosen up the compacted soil around the roots. They did annual treatments for pine bark beetle and showed my husband how to use an auger to drill holes around the drip zone, drop fertilizer in and then back fill with mulch and water well.

For a while there, we even thought it might be working.  We saw some new growth in the spring of last year, but of course that was before the drought.

We had thought that it was hanging in there and that it might have a chance, especially with the rains we've had this year.

But all of a sudden this year, it started going downhill fast.  It's like it just gave up.

We called the arborist out one more time and this time, instead of talking about things we could do to save it, he was talking about how soon they could be back to remove it.

I was still in denial for a few days and then one day I was coming home from work and the setting sun was shining on it and it looked like it was completely dead already.

My husband called them the next day and they made an appointment to come and remove it. It was a sad day and I'm glad I wasn't there to see it.

I suppose the moral to this tale is that if you are buying a house in a wooded area, you'd be well advised to consult an arborist before building begins and have him consult with the builder on steps that need to be taken to preserve the tree(s).

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Omen - My Twist on a Halloween Post

I looked out back during the week and happened to see this guy lurking in one of the sick-lloking pine trees along the road... (seen through the relatively healthy green needles of the tree in our garden)

Hmmmm -- an omen, perhaps?

This is the same tree that I talked about my post, You Tarzan, Me Jayne. 

We had reported two sick-looking trees located on the easement behind our back wall to the developer of our subdivision and they had sent a crew out to look at them.  The crew pruned up some dead looking branches but they apparently didn't treat the underlying cause of the problem (an infestation of clearwing moth borers, according to the arborist we consulted).

As we saw the trees continue to deteriorate, with large patches of bark falling off, we were fearful for the health of our own tree, even though we had it treated, so we placed another call to the developer and asked them to come out and assess the situation again.

I was home from work today and was indoors around 10 this morning when I heard chain saws outside.  Without even looking, I knew what was happening and, sure enough, suddenly there was a loud crack and one of the trees crashed to the ground.

The work crew made quick work of the poor tree and then turned their attentions to its neighbor...

You can see in the photo how bad it was looking.

It was down in less than 10 minutes and then the crew spent the next hour chopping it up and loading it up into a large van to haul away.

When I drove out to the store at lunch time, there was no mess and only a couple of stumps to show there had been trees there.

It's rather sad to lose part of what we consider to be our personal forest. But we both feel happier now and more optimistic for the health of our own tree, knowing that the two infested ones are down.

There are still a couple of pine trees out there and we are going to keep after the developer to get them treated and take care of them.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Me Jayne, You Tarzan

After being woken up one morning by the sound of a chainsaw outside the window, I looked outside to see a guy swinging through the trees behind our house...

My husband had contacted the Homeowners Association in the spring about the state of some of the trees along the road that our property backs on to and they had responded  and called in an arborist who had taken down a couple of trees that had succumbed to Pine Bark Beetle damage. 

Some of the trees were still looking *stressed* though and we feared for our "forest" so my husband contacted them again.  This time, they took out one small, mostly dead pine tree and then did some clean up on our little forest behind the house.

They look a lot better, and we feel better knowing there's less chance of a branch coming down in a windstorm and damaging our house.

In the fall, we'll be scheduling an appointment to give the pine tree in our back yard a deep fertilization as part of a program to help it recover from the shock it sustained when the house was built.

We want to be able to enjoy our tree for years to come.


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.