Dawn Redwood Needle Budding - Spring 2019

Of all the various tree-related posts here on the blog, the Dawn Redwood might have the most action in terms of posting.  I first bought our initial Dawn Redwood back in May of 2017 and planted it in our new backyard in Downers Grove.   By October of 2017, I was concerned that the tree was not going to survive.  And I was right.  It didn't come back.   So, I replaced it with a tree from an online nursery and planted it in July.  Not the best time to plant a new, young tree, right? 

But, by Fall, it was showing signs of growth and it had seemingly weathered the tough, stressful planting.  Mid-November of last year, the deciduous needles had turned all brown (as they are SUPPOSED TO DO!) ahead of the hard Winter.  Finally, my most recent post on this tree was on April 1st of this year where I shared a photo of some of the buds that had set last Fall about to burst open with new growth. 

The issue is that back on our initial Dawn Redwood, we too, had buds that had set, but they never opened.  But, this time seemed different and I was hopeful. 

And that's where we find ourselves today.  Check out the photo above.  If you click on it, it should get bigger where you can see all the little sets of green needles that have emerged.  Here's a link to the Google Photos version of this photo that you can click on and really zoom in to see the growth. 

This tree means a lot to me, so I'm excited to see it come back for year two.  I think that if I pay attention to it this year (again) and get it through July and August and September with some water and food, I'm hoping that a year-three tree (next season) will mostly be set on autopilot as the tree has (by then) mostly established itself with a robust root network.