Mesquite

We bought our house knowing we had 6 trees in the backyard. Two of which are way dead, one is a bit too close to the house for comfort, and the largest of the 6 is a massive mesquite tree that appeared to be growing at an unnatural 60 degree angle from the ground. Needless to say the mesquite tree was, no pun intended, our largest concern.

At some point this massive tree had fallen, or been knocked over and was resting on the power line for who knows how long. The massive roots that stick out of the ground look like a hand diving into the sand, seeking a buried treasure below. Out of concern of our slanted tree, its exposed roots and our future home we had an arborist stop by for a review of the situation. His professional opinion was that it would have to be removed. I wasn’t the biggest fan of his “professional opinion”.

Here is a picture of the tree. It took up about a quarter of the back yard and created a secret cove with its plethora of dead branches that had made their way to the ground but were still somehow intertwined with the live branches on the tree.

This Friday I returned home from work to discover Jonathan had been quite busy. Our tree was now rid of a majority of its dead undergrowth and was back to its former glory. Needless to say our backyard looked like it had lost some sort of tree battle and was now covered by massive tree branches, as seen below. (darn that one dead tree for being in the way of my photo!)




After a little over than two days of solid work on the tree, its really coming around. Despite its crazy growth pattern its quite strong, as proven when our “230” pound electrician lifted himself off the ground by hanging off of its trunk without any protest from the tree. Two trips to the dump later we are still hip deep in branches in our backyard. However, on a positive note, our tree is looking much healthier, we discovered a citrus tree somehow surviving sans sun beneath all of the mesquite’s over growth and we now have a ton of mesquite wood for future grilling.

In very small ways our little house has been steadily paying us back for its purchase. It started out with loose change during the cleaning process, and now has progressed to wood for grilling, and perhaps next year it will supply us with fresh citrus. Keep up the hard work little house.