So we woke up on Thursday to a giant branch down in our yard. Neither Julie nor I have any clue how we didn’t hear this. It was taller than the playscape and looked like it had gracefully just dropped into the middle of our yard without damaging our beautiful live oak.

In looking at it we realized it was the top of one of the hackberries we have along our fence line. The tree it fell off of is the one in the very center of the picture above. The electric company had taken off one whole side of them, and the other side had pressure from our amazing live oak, so they were struggling a bit. But we’d just had these folks out recently to take out some other branches that had fallen in our yard. I think we thought they were doing better than they were.

We got a good quote for removing the Hackberries at the same time from Wilder Tree Company. As one Hackberry had already lost its crown, and wthe second was mostly over our neighbors shed and had mushrooms growing on it — it seemed like the best thing to do was get rid of them before they took out a shed or a fence.

So now we have taken a shade garden and made it very sunny. We had a lot of rock rose that got trampled when the trees were cut down, but I have a feeling that will be back. We have another live oak that’s a decent size and that will probably be much happier now.

We’re glad it was so graceful and no one was around because after it was removed I looked and it had driven the playscape 4” into the ground. Change is inevitable in gardening, and why I’m always planting new trees.

• trees

Today I finally got rid of an old friend. This tree was here when we moved in. It was understory to a giant Hackberry that we removed fairly quickly.

Without the tree above it, it grew into a nice shape. It was centered perfectly in the flowerbed. It was just great.

But then we had one of those storm cells that whipped around and tore off half the tree. Then when they were digging out the pool they got a backhoe stuck in the hole, so they brought in another backhoe in to pull the first one out. This involved tearing up a lot more flowerbeds which were probably covering this tree’s root zone.

I let it go on for way too long hoping it would get better. But it did not get better. The one remaining branch just kept growing towards the pool and dropping leaves and flowers into it.

So I started chopping it down last week. Unsuprisingly the center was infested with ants. It was a bit thick at the base for my chainsaw so I left a large portion of it.

Today I went and bought an axe.

I really need to stop buying rubberized handles. Every time I’m in the store I’m like, “I probably won’t injure myself from the tool slipping out of my hands if I get the rubberized handles”, and forget that rubberized handles are amazing for grabbing onto skin and creating blisters and then ripping them off. I digresss.

I think it’s looking good. I’m planning on adding a Mexican Plum tree in that space and a lot of Greg’s Mistflower. We’ll see if I get around to that plan.

And per the last post a lot of these branches are gonna become swales… :)

• xeric
• redbud
• trees