Friggin' tree huggers!

This is our lot... or soon will be.  As you can see, it is flat, level and clean.  Oh, wait, what is that giant shadow?  That is the oldest and biggest Japanese Maple I've ever seen... and it is wonderful.

Great shade, great red colors in the fall, and it is our "spirit tree" if we had such a thing.  When our daughter was born, we got one from my dad.  Planted it, and then days later our dog Gumbo, pictured here in the shade, ate it down to the mulch.  Yup, ate a tree.

Anyway, we thought it was dead.  Next spring, up came a sapling and it grew and grew.  By the time we left OR it was about 8ft tall and very nice.  Unfortunately we could not bring it back East with us and it had to stay there.  We had actually grown to like that little guy, and was sad to see him go.

On top of that, I used to have a "climbing tree" when I was growing up.  You guessed it... Japanese Maple.  We had to leave that behind too when we moved from Phoenixville to Tokyo.  Again, sad to see it go.

Fate, right?  How could we not at least attempt to keep this great tree on our lot?

Today we met with Matt Ward, of John B Ward Tree Service,  that gave us a free estimate and some advice on what to do with it.  We asked a lot of questions and it turns out that it is quite healthy and would probably make it though the construction process quite well if we took some precautionary measures.

1. Remove all the paver stones around its base.
2. Fence off the "drip zone" so that no heavy equipment can get to it, or compress the soil around the roots.
3. Lay a 3inch deep pile of mulch in that drip zone.
4. Prune back the dead branches as well as trimming the ends of others.

That's it.  Not so bad right?

I think Matt was pleased that we were willing to save such a great tree and offered to give us the mulch for free. 

Again, how would we not save this tree.

Once we close on the property, I'll be there the next day pulling up pavers and fencing off the area - ready to accept a ton of mulch.