I’ve got 75 small native tree slips coming by mail from the state arboretum: 25 Blackhaw Viburnums, 25 white Dogwoods, and 25 Beautyberry. They should arrive one week from today, which means it’s time to dig holes.
These new tree slips will be about two feet tall, so they will not be very noticeable for the next 4-10 years, but they are all deer-resistant. The Dogwoods are less deer-resistant, but I am planting these where human activity should provide a little additional protection.
The Blackhaw Viburnum needs moisture, so this morning I dropped 25 holes in three down-slope areas that I know to be moist.
Fifteen of the Dogwood holes were also put in this morning, and another 10 holes in the afternoon following the rain.
The Beautyberry is a bit shorter when fully grown, is less finicky about moisture, and is quite deer resistant, so it’s going in last, along the forest line near the house and along the path to the two bee hives.
These 75 tree slips are joining four 5-foot tall non-native dogwoods planted earlier this spring, along with three 6-foot crabapples and two 8-foot Fuji eating apples planted at the same time.
Everything I am planting is designed to benefit wildlife, especially birds.
There’s a decent chance I will be dead by the time these small trees are fully mature, but isn’t that life itself — a baton race in which we receive from the past and pass on to the future? We dig and plant, recognizing that the tree slip is the hope, and not the promise, of something that will go on.
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