Moving Trees

When our new house was built, part of the landscaping included a pair of live oak trees in front. Nice looking trees, and in time would provide well needed shade. One little problem, one of the trees is alive, the other isn't. Something about no growth and then no leaves is a bit of a giveaway. I called the builders, who said they could get us a replacement at cost, like four hundred dollars. That's a bit much, so my wife and I decided to do the replacement ourselves.

Step one was get a new tree. Friday my neighbor across the street was planning to do some plant shopping so he invited me along. He has a truck, which makes things easier of course. We checked Walmart, and their trees were scraggly at best. So the next stop was the Houston Garden Center. Wonderful place, tons of trees and plants, and best of all, everything was half off. The temptation was to buy a whole forest, but I tempered my ambitions.

I found a nice live oak, about nine feet tall, which we wrestled into the truck, then took home. In the meantime, my wife had dug up the old tree, which was now lying forlornly on its side. Any woman who can uproot a tree has my respect, though when she's out of earshot I'll try to impress anyone who'll listen that I actually ripped the old tree out of the ground with my bare hands. I did contribute by sawing the old trunk off, then dragging the woody carcass to the empty field next to the house. There it can decompose and renew the cycle of life.

Next stage was dragging the root ball out of the ground. This was saturated with water, (one of the factors that killed the old tree is there is a layer of impermeable clay under the topsoil that traps water, in effect drowning the roots), and it weighed one hundred thirty seven tons, give or take an ounce. After seriously considering high explosives or a small thermonuclear device to get this thing out of the ground, I gave it one more mighty heave and it came loose. It was then rolled to the field to give it's all the continuing cycle of life. Though at this point I was hardly waxing poetic, I was just glad to get the damn thing out of the ground.

Time to call it a day. Then Saturday afternoon, with the temperature pushing ninety and the humidity climbing, we decided on the next logical step... get several bags of topsoil and mulch and plant the new tree. I quickly decided the toughest people in the world are anyone who works outside in Houston's hot weather. Step one was digging up as much clay as we could. Clay is another substance that increases in weight by a factor of ten when you need to move it from one place to another. One of my wife's horses, the Percheron especially, would have come in handy pulling the overflowing wheelbarrow the clay was tossed into to the empty lot so I could dump the clay out. Said Percheron has been happy as a clam being a pasture ornament her entire life. So if I even suggested putting her to work you would have seen a horse rolling on the ground in laughter.

Thus I ended up pulling and cussing the wheelbarrow to the field to dump the clay.

Next step was planting the new tree, then surrounding it with plenty of topsoil and mulch. Naturally the topsoil had packed on quite a few pounds from the time it was loaded into the car to the time it was unloaded. Ditto with the mulch. The tree itself had grown seventy five feet overnight meaning it was also heftier. But when all was said and done, the new tree was in place, except....

.... It was swaying a bit too much in the breeze as we had forgotten to stake it down. So another trip to Walmart to get some stakes and rope. The stakes were pretty tall, but had pointy ends which helped drive them into the ground. But not enough to stay. I got the ladder out to pound them deeper in the ground. In the meantime of course, the stakes had grown to three hundred feet tall so I had to shimmy up each stake, then pound mightily with a mallet to drive them deep enough in the ground to stay put. At that point tying the tree to the stakes was fairly easy, though my wife must have been tempted to lasso then hogtie me at that point.

Whew!

My next project will be expanding the flower bed out back. This is lined with enough building stones to create a respectable castle, most of which I already moved into place for the existing flower bed. For some reason I keep hearing the Chain Gang song in my head.