March 5, 2013

City Tree Update: New Life


Remember the big summer storm that came through and cracked our tree out front down the middle And how the city came and chopped it down in one fell swoop shortly thereafter?


...leaving us with this beautiful stump?


Well, after 8 months, the city came back and completely ground down the stump in order to plant a new little tree in it's place:


Basil supervised the entire operation:


The city provided one of these green watering bags around the newly planted tree called a Tree Gator. Basically, these bags are a slow release self watering system for newly planted trees. The bag targets watering the tree roots and prevents runoff and evaporation while it's at it.

The instructions on the bag said to fill it completely once per week for the next 2 years (two years!). So, we filled it up for the first time over the weekend:


The inside of the bag is hollow — you're just sticking the hose inside the outside flap and filling up the side pouches of the bag:


The bag holds a lot more water than we originally thought — it took a good while to fill the entire thing up:


Once full, the bag was puffy and good to go:


And that's where we're at with our city tree!

While we liked how the removal of the larger tree cleared up our front view, we're loving the new little addition out front and feel good there's that much more nature on our little strip of the city.

So over the course of the past year, we've gone from a mature tree, to no tree, to a new little baby tree just settling its roots into city soil. We're looking forward to watching this new little tree grow and change over time — and love the fact if another storm comes round to take it out, there's much less chance for it to fall in or over our house!

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