I Love Trees, I Don’t Love Digging

I love trees. And I love gardening. But two weeks ago I, um, bit off a bit more than I could chew and bought four trees at once.

Four. Trees.

That’s four holes.

Four x 4 feet wide x 2 feet deep holes.

Well, since time heals all wounds (and aching muscles) I can tell you that it was… 16 hours of digging. I started at 8:00 am Saturday, thinking I’d have plenty of time before the trees were delivered Sunday afternoon… (Fast forward: special thanks to my husband who came home from a vehicle extraction training for the fire department [read: digging things out] and proceeded to put in ~2 more hours of digging things out.)

In all, the trees are amazing. My hope is that in a few short months, I’ll be able to look at them and each time not think, “wow, that sure was a big hole to dig.”

Here’s a look at the locations before the trees went in:

West side, back yard before the Kousa Dogwood and Columnar Spruce go in

Back corner where we lost a Leyland Cypress in one of the storms (Sandy?); this is where the other Columnar Spruce is going

This? Is a BIG root! From an old dead tree – that I had to dig out! (Wah!)

This is the West side of the house, where the awesome 4-in-1 Apple tree will go. The neighbor as an awesome Japanese Lilac tree nearby which smells WONDERFUL in June.

That? Is a DEEP hole. With roots. And ANOTHER rootball.

No, no I wasn’t expecting this much dirt from the hole.

More holes

Stay tuned for tomorrow. I’ll be snapping a few pics of the trees in with a cuppa coffee before work.