So I haven’t been talking about Devin’s tree – mainly it was because I was afraid to look at it, since the whole situation upset me so much. The other part of it was that in some corner of my brain I was convinced that if I hovered it would die. And hurt me more. So I ignored it and just pretended it didn’t exist.

Well, today I had to spray it again. It has been apparent to me that the one branch – the lowest branch – has retained all its leaves. Even in that phase of ignoring it I could still see that one branch still had most of its leaves, and that kept me from giving up completely. However beyond that one branch, well, I wasn’t really sure. And a tree with only one branch is depressing as hell. But today I figured, okay, I’ve ignored it long enough, it’s not getting any worse. The damage was done and now I’ll just have to deal with it.

So I went out there with my scissors to see which branches were dead (apparently you can tell by scraping the bark, if it’s brown it’s dead; if it’s green it’s alive). Remember how the guy came out and cut off the top half of the tree? Yeah, it was all dead, the whole top half, stem and up. And he had mentioned that the next few branches may die too. So I decided to start from the top and work my way down to see how far the damage and gone.

Tested the topmost branch of what was left… dead. Next one? Dead. Ick. It wasn’t looking good. So I changed tactics… I left the one with the leaves alone, since that was obvious, went to the next one up. Green! It was alive! At least I’ll have a balanced looking tree, with two main trunks or whatever. So I went to the next branch up? Alive! Eeee! Three branches!

Turns out that’s all I’ve got left, the top three were all dead… but hey! I have three branches! And it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any worse, unless the winter kills it all.

No consensus has ever been reached on what exactly the problem was… two different professionals said two different things, but since their solutions didn’t hurt each other I did them both. Dug down to expose more of the trunk to the root flare and watered more, and of course the spray once a week. Was it the dirt? Lack of water? Fungus? Dunno. But some combo of that is working.

I exhale a little bit. Not a lot… just a little. Safe for one more day.