Can This Tree Be Saved?

Be careful of what you make fun of.  I am only a week into this blog, and by making fun of the ubiquitous Dwarf Alberta Spruce, I have brought the wheel of karma crashing into me.

Let me explain.  My law school friend Emily saw my post about how my neighborhood is full of boxwoods and Dwarf Alberta Spruces, and realized that the tree in a pot in her living room (which she and her family had rescued from the trash after Christmas) was yet another Dwarf Alberta Spruce.  It was losing its needles, and she wondered whether I'd like to put it into my garden.

Well, far be it from me to refuse a free plant, plus I figure my penance for mocking Dwarf Alberta Spruces was that I would have to rescue a dying one.  If this were a Very Special Episode of some 1980s sitcom, the tree would spring back to life under my care and I'd learn an important life lesson about not judging a tree by its cover, or not bullying trees that are littler than me, or something like that.

In real life, however, I got to Emily's apartment last night, and we quickly realized that I couldn't carry the ceramic pot that the tree was in.  So we unpotted it (well, Emily did, while I petted the cats), put it in garbage bags, and I lugged it home on the bus.  (Things I love about New York: nobody batted an eye when I got on the bus lugging a tree in a garbage bag.)

It was after 9 last night when I repotted the tree in my backyard, and any pictures I could have taken of the process would have been dark.  But I planted and watered it, and it's been out there all day.

So here's what it looks like tonight.  (I added a little more soil after this photo was taken, but the fact remains that I planted the tree in the corner of the planter, which I guess is a side effect of planting trees in the dark).

Doesn't look so good, right?  But if you look closely, there's a little core of green inside all of those brown branches.

See?  Still some green needles in there.  Part of me is tempted to cut the brown branches off and leave just the little green core, but there appear to be buds on the brown branches - so while the missing needles will never grow back, there could still be new growth where the buds are, assuming the buds aren't dead too.

I did some Googling, and it turns out that Dwarf Alberta Spruces don't do so well indoors, plus they are subject to stress when moved from indoors to oudoors (meaning if it wasn't already dead, I may have delivered the final blow).

http://www.garden.org/searchqa/index.php?q=show&id=29827&ps=6&keyword=potted&adv=0

So what I have here is a poor stressed little tree that will either give up, shed all the rest of its needles, and drop dead - or recognize that it's now out in the (relatively) fresh air and perk back up as best it can.

I was amused to learn that I am not the first person with a partially-dead Dwarf Alberta Spruce.  Here's a blog post from someone who turned hers into a topiary:

http://debsgarden.squarespace.com/journal/2009/12/19/a-topiary-tale.html


In other news, the Japanese Maple doesn't seem to be too distressed about the snow we got Sunday night (yeah, happy first day of spring to you too!).  Its buds are developing nicely, and though this is a pretty fuzzy photo, you get the idea.