Our New Tree

We have been in our home for three years now, but our trees in our front yard look ever much like when we first moved in, if not worse. We get more dead branches each year, making the tree look pretty horrible so we decided that we would replace our tree in the front yard. We went shopping at a tree farm and selected a beautiful Red Oak Tree. When we got home from our tree shopping, we took a look at our tree without the dead branches and I felt a little sad. I got a little buyers remorse, not for spending the money on a tree, but more so for removing something that was still alive. Thus, we contemplated canceling the order, but then decided that we would try to transplant our tree to another location in our yard.

Here is our very bare tree in its new location.

It was a lot of work digging out a hole for the root ball. I tried to pay the tree movers to dig an additional hole for us, since they had to dig for our new tree, but they wouldn't do it. I don't blame them. Trying to lift the tree with all that dirt by hand was nearly impossible for this 90 lb lady and her hubby so we had to recruit our neighbor for help. Thank goodness for that. Without the additional strength, our tree would still be leaning right now.

Here is our lovely red oak. When we built this house, I was against buying a tree that I would have to worry about raking leaves each year. However, minds change. We are ready for a fast growing tree, but at the same time we did not want something that had a short life span, like the Bradford Pear. We decided upon the red oak for its changing leaf color, foliage, and fast growth.

Isn't this a pretty tree? I'm glad we were able to leave the planting of this tree to the professionals. No more tree planting for us. We are out of yard space! Then again, we might have enough room for a crepe myrtle or a crab apple in the back yard. I've been wanting a hammock so those trees would look lovely by a swinging hammock. What do you think?