Celebrating Arbor Day

The state forestry folks celebrated the day, and Earth Day, with a giveaway of native tree whips. right at the local library. Crowds of excited people, many with kids, to show them how a big tree starts and all that.

So I carried home a wild cherry, which will grow ready to take over from the aged one, what's left of her after many years of service. She provided shade for dear HP when he was out on the patio, food for birds and other critters all year long, between fruit and the little thorns which birds and squirrels are mad for, and a wonderful place for bees in early spring,as well as shade for my houseplants all summer.  

The forestry folks  pressed two more trees on me, too, a black walnut and a chestnut oak.  These will either go to a friend or be a subject of a bit of stealth gardening on  my part.  Quite a while since I did any, but it's not very stealthy to go about with a big spade.  Looks a bit suspicious, in fact.

Anyway, the Dollivers, since they are All Green, sent out a team of hardy foresters to run the event once I got home with the trees.  

They came with little leaflets of explanation, I love the forestry guys, and here they are, reading left to right, well, I forget...I do know the cherry well, though, since it has that lenticular form on the branches even at this age.  And the identity of the others not so important, since they won't be fitting onto my patio.  

Anyway, I bet if Quinn our total blogista expert on all things tree, can tear herself away from her new goat twins for long enough, she'll set me right. And in case you wondered why the black walnut does not have a spot on my patio, here's a view, over the roofs, of mature black walnuts and friends, and you see the size these fellers can get.  The framing branch you see is what's left of the old cherry.

Black walnuts are not friendly to some other plants and shrubs, so it's better they're over there on their own turf.  But they're wonderful for harvesting to make black walnut ink, a la van Gogh.  We lost a lot of trees from Sandy so that might be a destination for the two spares.

Here's the future home of the little (well, it will eventually be big) cherry.  And here are the laborers posing for Dolliver Gothic and ready for action.

And here's New Cherry in place, bravely standing up and taking notice.

The  laboring Dollivers explained that they needed to sit down and take care of the other trees, which involved resting after the heavy job of forking out a ton of pachysandra,  and digging a big enough hole, and setting up the tree, and patting down and all that is required to establish it. 

And they reminded me to keep the other roots nice and damp while they rest up.