My First Tree:

Almost eyone's first tree experience has s embarrassing events. Nobody can be an expert ri away; we all make mistakes that stimes haunt us for years afterwards. S of us make worse mistakes than others, tgh. I nk that if th was an award for being the most na�ve person to e attempt growing a tree, I wd win.

When I decd to plant a tree of my own, I had the perfect spot in mind. Th was a gap between my se and my fence of about 5 feet. It was probably the least traveled area of my whole lawn, and I t it cd use sng to spice it up. Maybe if I provd s lovely shade, it wd bec more used by my family. I envisioned a little picnic paradise in the shade, wh my family cd go just to be with each other and nature. Boy was I wrong.

I decd on a nice apple tree. Despite the risk of apples falling on our heads, I t it wd be a treat to sit under the shade and munch on delicious h grown apples. Just the t of s romantic, poignant activity was enough to make me drive my self to the nursery and purchase the first apple tree in si. I didn't know enough about trees to look at the roots or any of the signs that it cd be an unhealthy tree. I spent the required amount of money and had the tree delied ri to my se.

I dug the hole ri wh I wanted the tree. This took almost the rest of the day. Holes are an easy ng to undstimate. It's easy to say that a hole will only take an r or two, but once you actually start digging it usually progresses a lot slower than you wd have estimated. By the time I actually got the hole big enough to fit the ball of roots, I certainly didn't feel like digging another few feet around the perimeter as most tree planting gus suggest. I was just ready to place the tree. With the help of my morbidly obese neighbor, I lifted the tree across the yard and dropped it into my hole. Then, it was time to fill in the hole.

I cdn't have been happier once I filled in that last shovel load of dirt. I stood back to admire my work. That was when my 3 year old dauer said sng that crushed my spirits, and haunts me to s day. "Daddy, that tree stands up like grandpa!" My father is a great man, and if she had compared any other aspect of the tree to him I wd have considd it an honor. But unfortunately his back has been deteriorating lately, and he can't stand up y strai. I noticed that my tree did indeed have a similarity to his posture.

Thinking s was a problem that the tree wd naturally outgrow, I decd to leave it for a while to see what happens. Ey day I went out to check on the progress of the tree; to see if it was any straier than it was the day before. I daily had my spirits crushed when I saw that it had not improved at all. Not wanting to put forth the effort of removing it from my yard, I decd to just forget about it. I ne went o to that s of the se again and almost completely pushed the tree from my mind. I decd that if any problem e came about from leaving the tree th, I wd pack up my furniture and flee the state. That's how much I was humiliated by my tree experience.

After about 3 years of completely ignoring that the tree e existed, I was sitting in my se one day and heard a loud crash. I ran outs to see what the problem was, just to see that my tree had grown to such an unmanageable size that it had taken out my gutter and part of my neighbor's fence. I moved out of state win a week.