Day of the Waltzing Trees

So what did you do yesterday? We took 2 trees on a road trip.

Our long time neighbor Elder Tom passed away in late September. He and Rod were buddies and Rod has been maintaining his yard and fruit trees for over 15 years. We're now working with the executor of his estate.

Tom had two favorite trees in planter boxes. The one on the front patio is a Japanese maple. It was planted in a 30"x30" redwood box about 20 years ago when it was a wee sprout. It's now close to 18' tall and has a trunk about 8" in diameter. It's so root bound it needed to be watered daily and was starting to show signs of distress. The other is a 10 foot tall blue spruce that was at the corner of the guest room.

The trees needed to be moved but there was no accessible place on Elder Tom's property to plant additional trees so we asked the executor if we could move them to our property as a memorial to Tom. He felt this was a a great solution so we called our friend Chuck at Apple Blossom Nursery to come up and give us a hand. He is a master on a tractor.

The spruce was the easy one, the Japanese maple proved to be challenge.
Chuck had to negotiate our power lines, a low hanging oak branch and thread his way between the blue spruce and our herb bed to reach the spot.

Root bound was an understatement for the maple. The redwood planter box had to be pried off and a breaker bar used to loosen some of the roots before it was gently lowered into its new home.

Several hours of watering and a B-1 feeding last night and a couple of hours of water this morning should get both trees on the path to recovery and growth. It's really cool to see them when I look out of my studio window. A variety of small birds are already exploring. The pictures are from early this morning.

Oh, and the old apple stump we removed for the maple planting was relocated on a whim and a prayer to a place down with 2 other apple trees in the pasture. It had a little bit of new growth on it so we're hoping it will get a second chance. It was one of my favorite eating apples before the gophers got to it.