Here you see a bed with a paver walkway to a side entrance on about August 29, 2019. I had pulled weeds and mulched, and you can see the Weeping Scotch Pine under the kitchen window had grown out over the doorway and walkway struggling to get some sunshine. These beds were overrun with thistle which concealed a great deal of the Creeping Juniper you can see in the foreground.
This view of the same bed is from the front porch.
This picture is upon returning a month later, on about September 30, 2019, for another maintenance session of weed pulling.
Another view that day after weed pulling.
20 days later, about October 20, 2019, we reached agreement on the transplant and I began digging the tree out as you see here.
Here is a closer look at the root ball once it was carefully released. This was somewhat easy because the ball had been planted in pea gravel up close to the house. The roots had done some girdling and hadn't expanded into the area as there was not much soil. So the area was well-drained of water and had little nutrients.
In this picture I have the tree across the paver walkway getting ready to move it. The tree companies had turned down this transplant. The reasons were cost and complexity and tree health. They only do this work with heavy equipment, and the equipment would not fit in the area without moving the pavers or destroying the pavers, and because the equipment destroys some roots the tree needs to be in robust health.
I decided to make a sled out of a free wardrobe box from the resuse pile at our local U-Haul and pull it with rope. In this manner it would fit in between the pillars of the pergola. It was simple and worked out incredibly well. The sled is shown here while I'm pulling it and walking backwards with the rope strapped around my torso. I had a video of this that was kind of funny and somewhat entertaining but it appears to be gone.
Before digging out the tree, I had dug out the new hole in the back yard as you see here. I had also tested the soil pH in the new hole to make sure it was good for this tree and applied some root hormone to the roots. The soil pH was tested with a meter from Turner's Greenhouse and Garden Center. The Weeping Scotch Pine can be seen in the background sitting on the sled. It only took 3-4 minutes to get the tree next to the new hole in the back yard.
Here is the tree in it's new home viewed from the walkway to the back porch.
Here it is viewed from the back porch.
And here you see it from further away in the yard with the porch out of the picture on the right. I also returned a few days later to put guy wire supports on the trunk for wind storms.
This picture from today, May 13, 2020, shows the tree gaining health and has my tape measure giving the tree a new height of 8.5 feet. Probably since the winter was so mild.
This is the yard view and I added blue lines to highlight the tape height and tree height.
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