Lots of things in the garden take patience. Plant a seed and time seems to stand still , then poof! one day you have a plant. Many things here take their sweet time getting established ( like our lawn) due to the poor soil and the combination of the lack of water , baking sun and ever present drying winds. Shrubs grow millimeters a year, perrennials clump out after eons, and trees, well trees seem to make time here go actually backwards.

Four yeas ago I finally hunted down a tree I had been longing to add to the front of the house. It is a red horsechestnut aesculus x carnea ‘Briottii’, and my desire to grow one canme first from having a horsechesnut tree in our yard grownig up (although it was white) and second  because the blooms on this sucker are just unreal . Long red spires opening atop those huge palm looking leaves, very cool.

AND the hummingbirds go crazy for them as they have long tubular flowers in their favorite color,red.This tree is not usually available in local nursery trade, and although I looked around I could never find one to buy that was at least 4-6 feet. I had to resort to an online order , which meant shipping, and a very small sapling. I happily planted it in it’s new home and sat back to wait for the first blooms. I knew it would take a little while to get going , but little did I know the obstaceles that would stand in it’s way to tree-hood.

The first year I had to relocate it,(I can’t remeber why now) and it suffered a setback from the transplant. The second winter voles got at the roots and things looked very iffy. Following that , the rabbits gnawed a significant hunk of bark off the bottom and it looked like the effort might have been an total loss. The arborist looked at the poor thing and just shook his head. But I was insistent it could be saved and dutifully kept the grass from growing any where near its base, and gave it lots of compost and water, and put a wire cage around it to keep the critters at bay.

This spring very early on I saw buds and was ecstatic, which quickly took a wild swing to sheer panic when I realized how early everything had leafed out and/ or set buds due to an unseasonably warm spring. I asked one of  the horticulturists , Joanne, at Tower Hill if she thought a frost would kill the buds . Tower Hill has, by the way,  a very large very beautiful specimen, and she said she did not know and only time would tell. She reassured me that all it would loose was the blooms and the tree would be fine, which is all well and good on a older tree from which you have already had many nice years of blooms…BUT NOT FOR MINE!!!!!!

I babied that sucker for the last three weeks, monitoring the frost warnings like a lunatic, and wrapping a sheet around the tree, several times in 4o mph winds which was ridiculous and borderline lock-em-up crazy and……………………………….

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Look at that will ya???? Isn’t it awesome!