Springtime Garden Relief: Our Dawn Redwood Is Budding Out - April 2021

I've been worrying about our Dawn Redwood tree for the past four weeks.  I use the traditional fingernail scrape method on tree bark to see if trees are healthy and showing green right under the bark.  Our Dawn Redwood tree seemed to be very slow to start this Spring.  I was seeing other trees have buds set and begin to leaf out in some ways while this tree was seemingly stuck in neutral.  Making matters worse, my fingernail test wasn't showing any green on the trunk.  It wasn't brown.  And the limbs weren't cracking.  But, I wasn't seeing green like I was on our other young trees.  

But, I don't have a Spring 2020 post in the garden diary here to show WHEN this tree needle'd out, so that gave me concern.  What was making me relax (a bit) was this post from 2019 when I show it being 'needle'd out' in early June of 2019.  So, imagine my delight (and, frankly RELIEF!) when I walked out in the backyard and noticed the buds swelling and showing off some green on the tips.   

Early April post from 2019 shows similar buds that weren't showing green yet, either.  

This tree is my favorite tree in our yard and is a replacement tree that I replanted in 2018 and have been baby'ing it with a soaker hose.  I'll get out soon to grab a caliper on this to document annual growth.