Planting That Big Tree Part 2

How's that for an ungainly silhouette? It's still bound up so it looks like those tall narrow things I pose next to at botanic gardens. Well, this is how I left off, with the tree awaiting planting...
So the next day- because we were all tuckered out from excavating enormous holes (like I could see the Chinese Embassy it was so deep!)- we vowed to get the tree installed in the ground, in it's new home.
I was certain that the tree- all 250 or 300 pounds of it- was going to land on Bob or me but it went swimmingly, thanks to Bob and his masterful engineering abilities. He laid planks sloping down into the hole and used a crowbar and a log and instructed me move what where as he carefully maneuvered the tree down.The next thing you know- hey presto! The tree was safely inserted. Bob even got finess-y about shifting just the right trunk to the front.

I was simply glad to see it planted with neither one of us crushed or dead. Hahaha; ever the optimist!
Next came the fun part.

(Having technical difficulties! Don't ask why the picture
is located over to one side... Just bear with me.) Anyway,
that's Bob tweaking the placement. Once the dirt goes in.
there's no undoing it; this tree is permanent!)

So we shoveled a lot of dirt, tamped it down to eliminate

air pockets, watered it in as we added more dirt and before

you knew it, the tree was happily ensconced in it's new home.

Bob spread it's branches out and then staked it so that it 

would be stable in a windy or wet situation. It was perfect

that we had rain the next day as it eased the tree's 

transition. I keep running outside to see if it's still there 

(it is) as I was so pleased with our new addition. It sure

helps to fill the empty spots left by that tornado- and it's 

a handsome tree at that! Welcome River Birch!

The Biggest Tree We'll Ever Plant

Just be glad that I didn't write the blog I was starting yesterday! A hint: the title was "A Bad Mood". Enough of that! Today was great and my mood matched it because Bob and I bought a tree! That's it, wrapped up looking like some giant dildo and eliciting stares as we drove home.

 I have been researching and shopping for a clump of birches, partly because I have always admired them and partly because we have all this empty space cheerfully provided by that tornado that visited. We needed shade and a feature to partially block our neighbor's house and a focal point. I wanted something jazzy that had several seasons of interest. I really like the very white birches but have been warned that they succumb to all kinds of borers and leaf miners and they're brittle and they break. So I turned up several cultivars of Betula nigra (River birch, more familiarly) with the varieties "Duraheat" (lousy name!) and "Cully's Heritage" being recommended as particularly attractive with extra exfoliating bark- bronzey golden brown that peels to reveal salmon pink and creamy under bark, with foliage that turns vivid yellow in the fall. After many trips and phone calls to nurseries, I found what I was looking for...

It was a lovely day, we took a pleasant drive to one of our favorite nurseries and... they didn't have the size we were looking for, despite it being mentioned on a "specimens list" that had been emailed only the week before. All that was available were gigantic and twice what we were looking at spending. Alas! But another employee at the nursery checked and located one that was about to be "upgraded" and graduated to more expensive status as it had grown so lustily this year. She sold it to us for the lower price (literally like 1/2 the price!) Hooray!!!

They wrapped this cluster up and helped to load it and suddenly it appeared like twice as big as it had. I was shopping for a (hahahaha) five or six foot individual and we got us a ten foot tree at a bargain price and I started thinking, "And now we have to get this sucker home and plant it". I'm certain Bob was having similar thoughts. It just looked bigger and bigger and bigger.
As you can see in the above pictures, it rode home quite happily and we got it off the truck intact- or I should say, BOB got it off the truck with ropes and gently inching it towards the planks he posted at the rear of the truck and slid it down. I dutifully held ropes and pulled on my side but nothing budged; I tried.
But I sent Bob into the house after he wrestled the tree onto the ground. He needed a rest and I could handle the next phase: digging the biggest hole I've ever dug. I have graduated from annuals to perennials to shrubs and bushes and small saplings to trees! (But I assured Bob: this IS the biggest tree we will ever plant.)

And here's my lovely assistant Robin, ideally suited to helping me dig. She did a marvelous job of loosening the soil so that I could shovel it onto the pile.

The pile got even bigger than that! Bob is going to finish the hole tomorrow and then we're going to plant. I'll post additional pictures of that Herculean task. But in the meantime, take a look at the detail of this bark. This particular clump is nice, too, as it has four trunks and will create a really remarkable presence in the vast empty wilderness left by the tornadoes destruction. Why, it will probably look like it was always here. Let's see if our friends notice it the next time they visit!

Crazy Town!

A fair warning: for those of you who don't want to read an incoherent and obscure rant, just look at the pretty flowers and leave. (They are, by the way, all zinnias plucked from our cut flower area of the vegetable garden. Don't know why the colors got sort of dark; I think I was a bit late in photographing them and they are darkening with age. Then I manipulated the boring background.)
So nothing to report except... Fear! Unhinged! Fire and Fury! Lodestar! Collusion/No Collusion! Witch hunt! Lyin' New York Times! Lyin Ted Cruz! Lyin' Hillary! Hoax! Fake news!
Anonymous! I am the Resistance! WTF! Again: WTF! And I like that a new parlour game was invented: name the anonymous White House staff person responsible for the Op ED.
So, hi! I'm having an average week in an average year and lovin' it. I guess you have to go with it or lose your mind. I will leave it to others to determine whether I've lost my mind or not but welcome to Crazy Town! Are we supposed to feel relief that a few individuals in the administration see themselves as "adults" and voices of reason? That does little to reassure me. I do feel like we're being driven off a cliff and I didn't ask to go along on that ride.
I know, I know... this is the messy tirade that I threatened but I was on the verge of explosion and this blog posting was my safety valve to blow off steam before I went super nova. And I could go on and on and on. But I'll spare you and stop here. I will do better next time. I promise.*

* You want to know what would make me feel even better? Waking up and discovering this was all a really bad dream. Not gonna happen, is it?

A Bee in My Bonnet

While I may be referring to "bees in my bonnet" metaphorically- like I do have crazy things buzzing around mentally and emotionally and socially and politically, I'll put those temporarily on hold and discuss the REAL bees.

Case in point is our hummingbird feeder where our beloved hummingbirds gorge themselves at this time of year, in preparation for their long flight south for the winter months. However, instead of hummers, we have attracted hundreds of deranged and suicidal honey bees. These bees have a million flower choices to pick from but have somehow, in a misguided and fatal mission, decided to main line sugar water. They can't get enough: some of them actually squeeze themselves into the tiny holes provided for hummingbird beaks and then they drown. This is doubly terrible as the honeybees- pollinators that we are more than happy to draw to our garden and help make our local honey- are dying in our feeder in crazy numbers. And worse, my friends the hummingbirds are unable to dine at the feeder because of all the swarming bees! I can't win!

In disgust, I took down the feeder and cleaned it and have stored it for the season...

And on another even less appealing note, Bob calls my attention to the gigantic hornets nest (Or wasp nest?) that is being duly constructed outside my studio window. Who knew? I've had that window cracked open and have walked directly beneath that huge hive with nary a problem, blissfully unawares of the hundreds (perhaps thousands!) of wasps building a megalopolis above my head! Not much you can do about that until cold weather comes except be careful and don't go poking any long sticks into it! There are plenty of other places to go looking for trouble!