Let me tell you..........tree shopping has come a long way, folks! My clever, bargain-shopping, number-head, hottie hubs sent a few emails out to local nurseries asking for price quotes on the type of tree we were looking for, including what they would charge to plant our new beauty. When he got back the quotes, the low-bid was from a great big nursery that we hadn't ever been to before, so we decided to go out and have a look at what they had to offer. We were so surprised and excited to find out that they have 40 ACRES of trees, plants & greenhouses and not only that, but they have a fleet of FREE golf carts that you can use to drive around and shop! HOW FUN!
They gave us a map & explained where we would find everything, we hopped in a golf cart and away we went!!
EDITED TO ADD: The purse in the photo is mine, not Bart's!! LOL!!
We were on a mission to find the perfect Autumn Blaze Maple. My handsome husband has done his research homework and we had decided that was the tree for us. Fast growing (approx. 3 ft. per year), hard wood (don't want another tree falling on our deck!) and most importantly, it will have that great, bright orange-red color in the fall, that I've always wanted.
So, our first stop was these trees in 15 gallon buckets. We thought the nursery had a brilliant set up -- see how there are buckets sitting down in a bucket? When you buy a tree, they just pull the bucket out and there's still an empty bucket left, waiting for them to bring in another tree-in-a-bucket and drop it down in the hole. So clever.
But these trees were smaller than what we were hoping for.....
We were having so much fun zipping around in our golf cart! Had to snap a photo of the two of us. Ha.
Next stop, the bigger trees! These have the root balls wrapped in burlap and they're buried there, in a bed of mulch so they can keep them watered.
Check out my hottie hubs as he searches for our perfect tree. Sigh.....I love that he knows quite a bit about trees, having worked for a tree service years ago.
And there he is, surrounded by Autumn Blaze Maples......trying to find just the right one. Do we go with the slightly larger ones on the left or the slightly smaller ones on the right???
Aha! We HAVE a winner! He's picked out 'the one'........and here comes 'the tree man' to write it up and put a sold tag and chain/lock on our tree!
Such a happy moment! They can even keep the tree there for us until the fall, when it's less stress on the tree to move it. That way, they would water and care for it during these next couple of hot summer months. Not sure yet, if we'll do that, or go ahead and have them plant it soon. At this point though, we have to wait a bit until the tree service can come back out and grind out the stump from our old tree.
And there she is.........our Autumn Blaze Maple! Ours is the one right smack-dab in the middle of the picture. Isn't she a beauty?! Hahaha! Wanna see what she'll look like in the fall (and when she's a little bigger!)?? Here you go.......(photo courtesy of the 'net).
Spectacular, wouldn't you say???? :)
