Trees

We love trees. Our yard was heavily wooded when we moved to our current home in April 2000. Initially, there were approximately 50 dead trees which we cleaned up with the help of our friend Dewayne Johnson and his twin boys. We seem to lose an average of 10-15 every year to drought, disease or perhaps just age. To replace them we've been transplanting trees, primarily from Mississippi. All of our transplanted trees don't make it, but some have done astonishing well.

Initially, we brought three pines from around Oxford, MS. One died when it was about 5 years old, but the other two in 2009 are around 30 feet tall. They were perhaps three feet tall when we planted them.

We brought a Cherry Laurel and a Water Oak from my dad's place in Laurel in early 2001. They were just seedlings, barely a foot high. In the Spring of 2009 the Cherry Laurel is at least 12 feet high and the Water Oak is probably 10 or 11.

A friend sent us 30 pine seedlings from the International Paper freezer in February 2007. Four of them are still alive. Two of those are six feet high, another is 3 feet high and the fourth is barely a foot high. It seems to be succumbing to the heat this year. We've tried it in a couple of different places.

We brought five pines from Arkansas a last year that are of the same variety as the rapid growing trees developed by the paper company. We planted these in our front yard and they seem to be doing okay. We'll keep watering.