Beech Tree News Network

Do you know how many dead sticks I’ve planted with no living trees to show for my effort?  Five, that’s how many.  Five!  It’s not my fault, really.  They kept sending them to me, so I kept planting them.  THEY are the people at those mail order nurseries.  The pictures show beautiful flowering trees, guaranteed to thrive under the right conditions.  They even send a planting guide with each purchase, which I confess I didn’t read with the first dead stick, but did read with every subsequent one.

                I did get one tree to live.  An Almond with beautiful pink blossoms, just like the one in the picture.  I ordered two at that time.  The second one I left in the ground for two months before resigning myself to the fact that it was a dead stick.  I contacted the nursery, sent them the original packaging like they requested, and they sent me another stick.  I planted it in the same spot I’d planted the first one—and you guessed it—nada, zip, nil.  I contacted the nursery yet again, and, yet again, planted the stick to no avail.  I was too embarrassed to contact them again, besides, with the popularity of Almond milk, I thought they would probably think I was running an Almond tree scam.

                I decided to switch gears and go with an ornamental Cherry tree from a different nursery.  The nursery sent the tree—in December.  It was an even shorter stick than the Almond tree sticks.  I put it in a small pot of dirt and left it in the house, because I was afraid it was too small to survive the winter outdoors.  The Cherry tree stick put out a few green sprouts, and I thought the dead stick curse was broken until Brother Cat jumped up on the table where it sat and chewed off the green sprouts.

                The reason I keep buying a second tree to go with my first tree is because I like symmetry.  The original Almond tree is on the left side of the area in front of my house, and I really need a second tree for the right side to balance things out.  This spring, Garey decided the soil in that area might be bad, so he dug up the dirt in that spot then filled the hole with good topsoil.  I decided I was finished with mail order trees, and I went to Bowling Green to pick out a tree I could see with my own eyes.  I selected an ornamental Cherry tree with lots of buds that had yet to open.  Garey and I planted the tree, watered it thoroughly, then waited.

                “I don’t think that tree is alive,” I told Garey.  “It still has the same buds it had when we planted it two weeks ago, and it hasn’t put on any leaves yet.”  I did that test they tell you to do, where you scratch some of the bark.  If it’s green under the bark, the tree is alive.  If it’s brown, the tree is dead.  It was brown.  I returned the dead stick to the place where I bought it and got a refund.

                Wouldn’t you think someone who grew up in the woods, with a father who was a sawmill man to boot, would be able to stick a tree in the ground and keep it alive?  Yeah, me too.  And we’d both be wrong.  I do have a red Maple that the Arbor Day Foundation sent me twelve years ago that is still living.  I set it out just beyond the fence that separates my yard from the pasture, because I didn’t want to mow around it.  Every year since, the new calves have chewed on it until it is disfigured.  Also, it’s only about two and a half feet tall.  It looks like a Bonsai Maple.  I had Garey dig it up with his backhoe and move it into my yard.  I felt sorry for the little thing.

                I told Garey that he is going to choose the next tree that’s planted on this place.  I am apparently the kiss of death to young trees.  Garey said he’s going to get a fruit tree, something he can eat.  At this point, I don’t care what he gets, as long as it’s not a dead stick.