by
Sajehar » Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:21 pm
Hi Juanka_2007
According to Susieq (did I spell that right?) it's a willow: a Salix Caprea Pendula Kilmarnock to be precise! Susieq is a mine of horticultural knowledge so I reckon she's spot on. Bit of a mouthful of a name though

; I just call it mum's special tree.
Thank you all for your ace and supportive replies; I don't feel such a numpty for responding so emotionally to a dead tree nearly five years after mum's death. That support/undertanding/call you what whatever.... was worth it's weigh in gold, and more to me.
But I'm now determined to post up the three photos I screwed up in the first place. I've even put them in a special folder (and numbered them) so's I don't cock-up. Here goes...... GULP!
Photo 1) Mum's special tree transplanted from the back garden to the front garden so she could see it daily (she loved that tree) without the hassle of getting her to the back garden which caused her pain due to rheumatoid arthritis, etc. Photo taken late Aril 2014.
Photo 2) Photo taken May 2017... Boy did it leaf up that year!!! Mum had been dead now for nearly 18 months, but seeing her tree so leafy meant she was still around somehow. Maybe the fact that we'd scattered some of her ashes around her special tree got that though in my head?
There's no more photos of it until it blew over in very high winds this year. The reason being sheer vanity on my part!
In 2018 I rejoined as a volunteer at the hedgehog sanctuary (still there.) Mum's tree bushed up even more in 2018 than the previous year. So I decided to cut it into the shape of a hedgehog, as you do!
I watched loads of u tube vids on how to do topiary and set to with my secateurs. This topiary stuff is a lot harder than it looks and my attempted weeping willow 'hedgehog' looked more like a screaming,startled, up-ended rat by the time I was finished.
It was so awful I didn't take any photos of it as I was that ashamed of my efforts.
No matter the rat - these things happen - I then decided to turn it into a meercat because meercats are even skinnier and up-ended than rats. Plus Mum loved those meercat adverts with a passion. I think my 'damage limitation meercat' in honour of mum probably killed her special tree. Maybe it was a topiary trim too far? That last point has only just occurred to me, by the way.
By late autumn 2018 its leaves had all shriveled up, but that kind of stuff happens in autumn anyway so nobody gave it a second though. By early summer 2019 not a single leaf/bud had appeared. Both Dad and SM were convinced it was dead and wanted to remove it. I fought them tooth & nail, insisting it was just resting.
We compromised: We'd leave it till late spring 2020. IF it still hadn't budded/leafed by then, then we'd remove it. But the winds got there first; as follows:
Except I can't do a third photo, so I'll do a second post instead.... bummer! I'll risk Previewing this post; usually a mistake