Arbor Day

A few Fridays ago, Scott chopped down our pine tree. The summer before last, when we had no lawn, we kind of burned our pine tree to death. I am not used to actively watering mature trees and it didn't dawn on me that since we weren't watering lawn, we also weren't watering trees. Our deciduous tree had leaves that were horribly burned but seems to have made it through and came back. Our Pine tree however, was looking really dead this spring. Since I hope to be planting the flower beds this year, I didn't want to plant around the tree (hoping it would live) only to have to dig up my bushes and flowers when/if we have determine it is for sure dead in a few years. I am risk averse so Scott chopped it down. We have now only to dig out the stump (we've been putting that off because we know it will be a big project).

The funny part was that the Sunday after we pulled out the tree, our neighbor teased us "I think you are supposed to plant a tree on Arbor Day not rip one out!" They found it very ironic that we happened to pick Arbor Day to denude the earth. How very un-green of us!

To make up for it we planted a Shademaster Locust on Monday night (daddy, are you proud?) and are planning to plant a Crimson Sentry Maple in the place of the pine tree. We also planted Skyrocket Junipers a few weeks ago and a boxwood and Japanese maple, so I think that we might be square with the environmentalists. And for extra measure, I bought some reusable cloth bags at the grocery store (now we have to see whether or not I actually remember to take them with me to the store).