The Demise of the Upside Down Tree

So last summer I realized that something was wrong with the tree in our front yard.  It looked... unhappy.  It was a sugar maple.  It's foliage took forever to come in after the spring, and what did appear was thin and sad.  Then, the leaves turned red crazy early, like two months before fall.  I looked online and called the extension office and diagnosed our tree with Maple Decline.  Through my research (which went well beyond a visit to Wikipedia, thank you very much) I discovered that, really, no one exactly knows how or why Maple Decline happens.  There are a few theories, but nothing proven.  Also, there's no cure.  Our tree was looking at a slow, prolonged death.  I decided we would replace the tree the following (this) spring.

Spring came.  Everywhere around us, trees were coming alive with blooms and foliage.  Just not our tree.  It remained as bare and forlorn as it had been all winter.  It had given up.

Well, not completely.  For some unknown reason it decided to become an upside down tree, with branches, full of leaves, no less, growing up from the bottom of its trunk.

Stupid tree.

Lance and I knew it would be a big, no-fun-whatsoever project, so we kept putting it off. I'm sure our neighbors were beginning to wonder if we were ever going to take care of it. But yesterday I knew we couldn't put it off any longer.  It had to go.

First, I had to take a picture of the stupid upside down tree.

True story: during the summer of 1999 I went to London with my dad and brother (hi Kyle!) for 10 days.  While there we of course visited the Tower of London.  One of the Beefeaters told a story about how a long time ago (I dunno, maybe during the 16th or 17th century) they executed a member of the royal family by beheading him.  But then they realized that they didn't have a portrait of the man, which apparently was a pretty big deal, so they sat his body in a chair, propped his head back on his neck, and had the portrait done.  Poor artist... Anywho, the same thing kinda happened with my tree.  I had lopped off half of the bottom branches before I thought to take a picture, so most of them are propped up there against the tree.  I betcha wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't mentioned anything.  Unlike the portrait of that beheaded royal.  Yikes.

So Saturday morning, which just happened to be the warmest Saturday of the year so far, we got to work.  First, we had to take out all the rock that was surrounding the tree.  Lance was lucky and discovered a gigantic colony of very angry and bitey ants.  We took out rocks (and got bit by ants) for what felt like forever.  We took out the day lilies (which, in my humble opinion, didn't help the tree any) and then took out even more rocks.  Seriously, there were probably 2-3" of this decorative rock.  Then we had to take out the landscaping fabric.

During this time Tess was in her playpen by the front porch.  Cole decided to 'help' by putting at least a dozen landscaping rocks into the playpen with her.  She eventually started fussing, so I went over to her and found her sitting on half a dozen of these sharp, pointy rocks.  Plus, in one hand she had a rather large rock that she had been chewing on and her other little chubby fist was full of pebbles, dirt, and other sundry debris.  She wasn't too happy about any of this, and was especially BANGRY when I took the rocks away from her.

Aren't big brothers wonderful?

Back to the tree.  We finally got to the dirt and the roots.  We only had one shovel, which Lance started using to dig up the tree.  I felt dumb just standing around, so I decided to go to Lowe's and get a tree, some dirt, and a new shovel, because our old one was cheap and sounded like it was going to break.

An hour later (I took Cole with me, which is why it took so long!) I got back to discover the dead tree laying on its side on our lawn.  Lance had gotten it out all by himself!  I was very impressed.  What a manly man of a husband I have!

We planted the new tree, spread the new landscaping fabric, and put back the bajillion rocks, which took considerably less time than taking them out.  Then we carried the rather heavy and very dead tree to the back of our property, where we throw green stuff like that all the time in the tall grass and bushes.  (Because, really, why would you throw a tree in a dump?)

So here's the new tree. 

Isn't it so much more lovely than the old one?  Okay, anything is lovelier, but whatever.  It's a Cleveland Pear. It's not a fruit tree, the name just references the shape it takes on as it matures.  These trees are all over the place here and seem to thrive with little maintenance, making it the perfect tree for us!  (Because frankly, I don't know if I could convince Lance to replace another tree any time soon.)