Unpacking 2 New Trees

Nov 18, 2025

Received a shipment, yesterday, of what I hope will be 2 new members of our tree collection, or rather, 2 seedlings..a Pacific Crabapple & a Flowering Dogwood. Ordered via the Internet, direct from the breeder, shipped/delivered via USPS, these specimens arrived in a cardboard tube

First job is unpacking the trees from their shipping tube, carefully & extracting the packaged seedlings. 

This is the Pacific Crabapple(left) & has a plastic envelope protecting the juvenile roots & root "plug" which retains the shape of the propagation tray it came out of.

Next step is to give the seedlings a good drink of water..I let them soak overnight.

During the soak, some of the loose soil washed away & revealed that both of these seedlings had healthy, white roots..the Crabapple is the larger of the 2 & will fit into a standard training pot that I use for almost all of my trees when they first arrive.

The Dogwood is smaller & fit nicely into a previously used pot. Now I will "water them in" & keep a close eye on them for the next few days. This is the most critical stage of their lives when they are vulnerable & have not developed any defenses against disease or insects that prey on young plants.

If they live, I will start a dedicated History page for each & post it to the list, so that you will be able to see each plants progression as they grow into mature "little trees in little pots".

Nov. 30 - Update

Both of these seedlings survived 5 days in-transit, and nearly 2 weeks since they were potted & both are showing signs of growth, so I have formally welcomed them into the collection, live or die, & created permanent Photo/History pages for each, which have been added to the list of speciman trees.

They can be found at Pacific Crabapple (Malus Fusca) and Flowering Dogwood (Cornus Florida) respectively. To see the complete article showing the process of receiving, unpacking, potting, etc. see Unpacking 2 New Trees.

Weather Widget Down?

 Yes, we know that the Weather Widget isn't working this morning..according to Google, the problem is with Cloudflare that provides services for many corporations, websites & API's like the Weather Widget. You can read more about the outage here: article -"Cloudflare Outage..." The widget will start working again as soon as Cloudflare fixes the problem at its end.

Nevermind..it's fixed!

New Features Added

 The inclement weather this weekend has prohibited any outdoor gardening, but it has given me an opportunity to work on the blog and add a couple of features that I want to tell you about.

Google Translator: On the upper right-hand side of the homepage you will see a new feature labeled "Translate", with a drop-down menu that allows you to view my blog in any of 110 different languages. Try it  yourself..just "click-on" Select Language , pick a language & enjoy.

The other feature is embedded in the Blogger code (Blogger is Google's blogging software). If you "click" on any photo on the blog, it will open in a full-size version & display all of the other photos on that page as thumbnails along the bottom of the screen. You can scroll through all those photos without having to read the narrative. So, if you're searching for a particular photo, you can review them en masse' as opposed to one at a time.

Nov 17, 2025 - UPDATE:

This morning I added another new feature to the blog that seems highly appropriate after the last few days..a 

Weather Widget . Placed in the upper-right corner, it will most likely be the first thing you see when you log in..enjoy.

Rain, Rain & More Rain

Nov. 16, 2025 

This is our 3rd straight day of rain..very much a typical early, taste-of-winter storm for us. This storm has been a real "soaker"with few breaks in-between the squalls carrying tropical moisture in addition to a preview of the coming rainy season that we call "winter".

My "little trees" not only  came through this storm, they are absolutely thriving..they look happier & healthier this morning than usual, due to the rain that has cleaned the air and given the plants a deep drink of clean, fresh water & hopefully flushed many of the toxins & chemical water treatment residues that build-up over time.

Unfortunately, I only have access to municipal water here, which is not great. The only alternative is either bottled water or some sort of water filtration system, which sounds extreme, just to water some plants, but seeing the visible improvements to their foliage, posture, color makes me think that I need to spend some time finding out if I can improve the situation at a reasonable cost.