The Trials and Tribulations
of Little Blue
Part One:
One day I looked out of my window and ....EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!
What happened to my little blue elderberry bush / tree?
The leaves were drooping, crumpled, shriveled and shriveling.
Except for one branch, they had no lift to them at all.
I guess I hadn't looked at in a few days. :(
It started like this:
then, despite my misguided watering, it got worse!
The drooping leaves turned brown and shriveled up entirely,
though they did not drop off.
I can't tell you how upset I was about this tree that I had raised from a stick in the
ground and so prominently featured on my web page!
So I called my personal "Tree 911" here on Long Island, namely....
TreeBelievers.com
Before I knew it,
came to the rescue, put on his surgical gloves and
quickly began digging towards the roots like an archaeologist
on the brink of the end of his career.
Here is a representation of what we saw underneath:
I made one root colored differently above to make it stand out in the picture above,
but in truth they all looked pretty similar, except the direction of this one root seemed
to be wrong and was pressing against the others, causing the problem..
It was hard to tell if it was a misguided root from the elderberry tree itself turning
inward, or an invader. "Dr." Strauss decided it was the most likely an invader and that
either way he needed to "make the cut". So that he did.
And guess what...soon after...new life began to emerge!
(See Below)
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However....
Since then, yet another assault upon her as occurred.
Over the rough winter, the bottom of her delicate trunk had been
Girdled by Rodents!!!
(I suspect my friends the squirrels)
She was all but gone. Everything above a few inches from the ground was beyond hope.
I of course called back the Tree Believer troops, and this time it was a drastic situation
calling for a tough call, and a severe operation. The team went to work right in my yard.
So now, this is May of 2003, here is Little Blue in her current, new stage of her life.
So far she has survived.
As I first said in 1999,
we will just have to wait for Little Blue to grow.
