An old tree

Our old dogwood has probably been around longer than we have. For a dogwood, that is a very long time especially given the disease it has had since way before we got to the neighborhood. Dogwoods around here are susceptible to Botrytis which eats away at the tree and kills it fairly quickly. When we moved here almost 17 years ago, the tree had long since been sick and had a large, dead limb at the top of the tree. We had a tree surgeon lop off that dead wood and look over the rest of it as it never seemed to bloom much back then and just seemed to be getting more and more ill with each passing season. He said, with care and coddling, we might just limp it along for a few more years.

We did this. We fed the earth each Spring and Fall and even though parts of the tree died away and fell off, the core of the tree seemed to improve enormously. The evidence was that new limbs elsewhere emerged and each Spring more and more and more flowers bloomed. We had a second tree expert out to prune some big firs in the backyard a few years ago and, of course, had him look at the Dogwood. He looked it over and pronounced it quite, quite fit. Regardless of how the trunk looked, he thought the tree might just outlive us all!

This year, this shabby looking tree has produced more blooms than it ever has. You both can and cannot tell a book by it's cover or a tree by it's trunk.