Poor Little Tree

We have this little mimosa tree in our back yard.

I grew it from a seedling. Fate keeps trying to discourage it from surviving, but it just keeps chugging along. In April this year we had a hail storm. A bad hail storm. In fact, at the time of this writing, the roofers are on top of the house now removing the hail-damaged shingles and replacing them with new un-damaged shingles.

The hail really beat up this little tree. It had big gouges in the bark. Nature being the survivor that is, caused a new tiny bud to sprout in each of the gouges and before long the little tree was really showing new growth in a wonderful way.

Then we had another storm, this time it was wind. Wind gusts up to 70 miles an hour and this ferocious wind lasted all day! It blew and blew and blew the fence almost down. The wind didn't hurt the tree, however the consequences of the wind certainly did!

We share fences with our neighbors in this area. The folks behind us have dogs. Well everybody in this neighborhood has dogs, but the folks behind us have big dogs. One is a curious husky. He managed to get through the half blown down fence and explored our yard.

"A tree! What's this stuff on the tree? Yummy! "This curious pup pulled the bark off one whole side of the tree! I saw him do it from the kitchen window. My neighbors chose this time to be gone of course and the pup being a suspicious canine would not let us get close to him. So we spent the next three hours trying to coax him back to his yard and keeping him from eating the rest of the bark from the tree.

Eventually the neighbors returned home and so did the pup. A temporary fence fix kept him at home until more permanent repairs could be made.  In the meantime we watched our little tree wondering if it would make it. Many of the new branches slowly turned yellow and died. Slowly several brown spots showed on the stark white left after the bark was 'liberated'. Is it a fungus? Or is it new bark? The yellowing leaves are not as many now and the tree even bloomed.

I have heard it is hard to kill a mimosa tree and I believe it. It looks like the tree will make it. Unless something else happens.

Martha