Moving an established fruit tree

In a word. No. I wouldn’t if I were you.

But there comes a time when you lose so many battles in building work and the clash of the green space versus living space that things have to move.

Here is the almond in its glory.

And you can see that the white line shows it has to shift or turn into a playful part of a very large stone wall.

(It is taking forever to upload the pictures today, so I am going to retro fit this shot if I get a bandwidth that permits playful things like blogs.)

And it’s a testament to the patience and the kindness of the builders that they all stood around in a circle and looked patiently at the tree, then me, and then waited until I accepted the logical decision.

It had to move.

And as soon as Bebere climbed behind the controls of the mini digger it was all hands on rootball.

I had chosen the least annoying place for the positioning of the new almond. On the lower terrace below the house. Still in hose length distance to water it in. But not so far that it would be forgotten.

And I swear this was the mere work of minutes.

The digger went down to dig out the soil of the new spot. Up came the tree, and we all trotted down to drop it in.

The roots barely had time to shriek.

Nicolas and I positioned it, then built up a good basin of soil and an edge so that I can water lavishly when the time comes.

And now we just have to wait. The perverse part of me thinks that having the canopy pruned so hard before the storms means that it saved catastrophic damage that hit all the trees around it.

So it might have been prescient.

But actually right now I wonder if I’m just looking at a sculpture rather than a shocked, living tree.

It is still just a thick trunk and stark branches. I wonder if it will ever burst into growth?