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ejr2005

Sale and Story

ejr2005
13 years ago

I'm a bit late with this but last time I was at Mahoney's in Winchester they were having a sale on some of their hydrangeas. I bought some nice looking Annabelles. They had some other kinds on sale too - i think Glowing Embers and some of the Citilines. I also noticed that Sedum Autumn Joy was on sale.

After I bought the Annabelles, I noticed some tree form H. Limelights against the fence. There was one really nice one that I kept looking at. They said they could tag it for me until the end of the day so my husband could see it, and I could have more time to decide. My husband got out a little early so I met him there a bit earlier than planned. Luckily...

When I parked in the lot I saw a couple looking intently at "my" Limelight. I jumped out of my car, didn't even wait to for my husband to catch up, and went over to the hydrangea. By this time the wife had moved "my" tree over to the next tree and had already changed the tag with my name on it to the other tree! I guess she was planning on changing both the tag and their positions. She wasn't very nice about it but did relinquish the tree. Of course then I had to buy it.

The upshot was when we brought the tree home it was a couple of days before the "hurricane" and we were afraid to put it in the ground. We watered it and put it in the garage the night of the "hurricane." We took it out in the morning but couldn't plant it for a couple of days. It was windy. I was watering it and put rocks on it to keep it from falling over in the wind, but it fell over a couple of times anyway. We finally lashed it to a tree.

When we planted it I realized that it was totally root bound and so hadn't had soil to hold the water. I watered it a lot once it was in the ground. The tree had gone from being this real beauty that people were fighting over, to this poor thing that had many brown leaves, browned out flowers, and green leaves that were hanging down. It also had a cut on it's bark from one of the rocks. So sad. I watered a lot for about a week. I know you're not supposed to water that often, but I had another root bound hydrangea and constant watering for a week or so seems to have brought it back from the brink.

Finally two days ago the remaining leaves started perking up. I stopped watering. Tonight we're getting rain. I'm planning to put on of those tree waterers around it in a few days, hopefully weaning it to less frequent watering.

When I talked to one of the employees at Mahoneys it seemed that this woman had done other things like that. I also remember someone at Weston's warning me that people would do that. So beware!

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