Autumn Blaze

Friday, October 17, 2008

On our first anniversary, Chet and I decided to plant a tree. It was an Autumn Blaze Maple. That little tree has certainly brought us much joy. It has thrived and grown and given us shade to rest under. That is the tree my family is sitting under in "My Family Vision" photo over there on the right. The one problem with this little tree, which has grown quite tall now, has been it's lacking of red and gold pigment which warrents it's name "Autumn Blaze". Each year after caring for it and watching over it, we hope we will be rewarded with the trees fall beauty. But alas, it has not been so. We had soil samples taken and analyzed last year, thinking we could amend the soil and that would help. However, that turned out to be a more complicated process than one would imagine. No one had a good answer for us once the report came back. Basically, I think the soil was pretty much normal. But the tree would be lovely green in the Spring, but mid-summer it was turning to light green and finally by Fall a sickly shade of pale yellow, at which time the leaves would fall off. Not really what we were looking for when we planted our tree. But, we love the tree.

This summer the "tree guy" from TruGreen came by and talked to Chet about all our trees and shrubs. Now mind you, we have been using them for our Lawn service for several years due mostly to the fact our property is too large for us to want to handle all the feedings and sprayings ourselves. I've been happy with the service sometimes, sometimes not. But our "tree guy" really made a hit with Chet. We also have 2 Ash trees suffering from Borers. The 2 really nice shade trees in our yard. We certainly didn't want to lose them. "Tree Guy" walked Chet through what to do for each tree and what He was going to do for applications and hopefully we were going to save all the trees and make them healthy.

I gotta tell ya, "Tree Guy" knows his stuff and is very passionate about trees. The Ash trees are looking much healthier, he dosed the Maple with an iron treatment and the leaves were mostly dark green down one side with only part of the tree having yellow leaves. This is a great improvement over the previous years. Now at least half of the Maple is showing "Autumn Blaze". We are very excited and can't wait until next Fall to see if it comes back fully.

This photo is of the second Autumn Blaze we planted in "Dad's Garden". We are making sure it will always Blaze in the fall...I think Dad would have enjoyed it very much...