12.13.08 and 12.14.08

It’s time to get rid of the blasted crepe myrtles. My neighborhood helpers “Bob” and “Dodger” helped me dispatch the big one in the yard once I figured out it was just too big to dig up. They did a pretty good job, all things considered. No fingers were lost, and no one got hit by a falling branch, so I consider it a success. That's a story for another day!

But this little one by the garage – I’m loathe to just cut it down. It just might be small enough to dig up and transplant to Ed’s house, so we’re going to give it a shot. Ed and I attacked that one this weekend. We fought and dug and cussed at the tree and at the chainsaw. We abused the loppers (god bless Fiskars), dulled the hatchet, and gave the pick axes a good workout. And we finally got the blasted thing dug up. We toppled it into the driveway and Ed went off to go rent a truck to haul it with. I hosed off as much soil from the root ball as I could, and trimmed it up just a bit. Once the soil was removed, it was super light. It took nothing to throw it into the truck. I think we did all of this on Saturday.

"stock photo"...hehehe

When he had the truck, Ed picked up some soil and such from the hardware store and got his site prepped for the tree. In the meantime, I took the chainsaw to the stump of the other crepe myrtle and tried to whittle it away. I only got so far before I needed a new chain. By then, I had had enough for the day so I cleaned things up and packed it in.

The next day, I headed off to Ed’s place to help plant the tree. He had already done the hardest work. The whole was dug and he had a bunch of soil and substrates laid out on a tarp. We just cut the bags open, mixed the stuff up, and poured a good little pile into the hole. I convinced Ed to trim the top of the tree within an inch of its life, hopefully encouraging it to focus more energy on establishing roots than on growing more leaves just yet. It also helped with drag from the breeze, which threatened to pull the tree out of the ground before we gave it a hair cut. Once we had the tree sitting nicely on the mound of good soil we had mixed, we worked on filling in around the tree, being very careful to work soil back into the pockets around the roots as much as we possibly could. We would pack in some soil, then flood the hole and let it drain. Later, rinse, repeat until it was solidly planted. I think we did a really nice job. I’m pretty sure it’ll even wake up and grow this spring. Yay!!

...mixin' soil...plantin' the tree...waterin' it in...

...happy tree!! yay!!