The Friday before Labor Day our 80-foot hickory tree blew down in a hard wind. It was fungus-infected, probably weaken when lightning took down the close-by oak.
The week before Thanksgiving, the Village of Lakewood arrived with a twenty-foot replacement.
Not a hickory, because their tap roots for a tree that size are too deep to transplant, but an oak.
A red oak, the crew leader said.
Lakewood is a “Tree City.”
Some municipalities just put up the signs, I imagine.
Transplanting this oak was “walking the walk.”
It and two others were found under a Commonwealth Edison power line on Haligus Road.
One was planted at my neighbors before the crew came to our house.
The hole was dug. Time to drop the burlap balled and wired roots of the tree into the hole.
The next step was straightening the little oak.
Once the tree trunk was straighted, the hole was filled in and the root ball watered for twenty minutes.
And, next year, there will be more leaves.
I planted a red oak seedling in my parents’ backyard in ther mid-1980s, it’s the best of the many trees on the property.
I thought there was a long list for tree replacement in Lakewood? You only had to wait 2 months? You must know the right people!