Planting Trees
Dec 19 2010

broken tree

The good folks at Tree Folks decided that we (the neighborhood) could benefit from planting more trees in our front yard.  I’m fortunate enough to live in an older neighborhood with great big trees everywhere but there is an effort to add more shade to the street area for energy conservation and other environmental reasons.  So, I got to select up to two trees (Elm and an Oak) for the front yard for “free” which doesn’t have as many trees in it as other houses in our neighborhood.  I have to plan them between 3 and 12 feet from the street.  Our back yard has 5 really big trees.  I thought I only selected one but out of the blue the other day 2 trees in pots showed up laying down in my yard.  I didn’t expect them until the spring time, but there they were and now I have to deal with getting them planted during the Holidays.  Guess it’s a good a time as any.

Long time readers of my blog may remember (won’t blame you if you didn’t because I just remembered I blogged about it) we lost a tree back in July 2008 that was near the front of the house because it decided to fall on our roof.  It was rotting from the inside and if you click that previous link you’ll see the pictures.  I miss that tree and we never got around to planting another one in that location and unfortunately it’s too far back from the street to put one of the Tree Folks trees there.  I just re-read the post and saw that I wrote “What I found really interesting is that although on the outside we noticed one dead limb the other trunks/limbs (even the one leaning on our roof) was full of leaves and looked healthy.  I guess it goes to show you that something can look healthy on the outside but be sick, diseased, and dying on the inside.  That’s really kind of a sad, yet eye-opening thing to think about.”  The same is true of people and animals…you just never know, but that’s a topic of another post or probably PhD research thesis.  Sigh.

I’ve never planted trees before so my neighbor, who is good in the garden, has kindly agreed to help me plant them.  I think it’s a great program these Tree Folks, Austin Energy and Austin Parks and Recreation are sponsoring, but it’s proving to be more of an effort than I thought.  I had to notify them so they could call all the organizations (e.g., cable, electricity, etc.) who might have put some wire down anywhere near where we are considering planting the trees to come mark up the place.  I have a bag of mulch, soil, liquid transplant solution, and tree stakes ready to go.

I have pretty good luck with the plants inside my house but I’m not sure if my green thumb extends to outside of the house, so we’ll see what happens.  Special thanks to my generous neighbor who is going to help me and the kids plant these trees!

If any of you have any tree planting advice for an Elm and an Oak tree (which are sitting out in pots in my front yard right now), please let me know.  I probably won’t be living in this house when they are nice and big, but some future resident will benefit from their beauty and shade.

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