The mystery tree that is no longer a mystery...

One of the exciting and sometimes frustrating aspects of buying a new house is all the new flora that you get to enjoy and in many cases learn to take care of.  We are thoroughly enjoying getting to know all the beautiful trees in our yard (this, of course, excludes previously mentioned Mulberry tree which was technically in our neighbors yard but managed to grow almost entirely over our yard.  Ugh!). Many we fell in love with right away, like the huge plumeria specimens we have on either side of the yard.  But then there are those that have taken some time to figure out.  The mystery tree fell in to this category.  You see, it looked like this when we moved in... What is with all those twiggy branches.

We had never seen anything like it before and no one we asked seemed to know what it was. Then one Saturday, my husband saw the same type of tree in Balboa park near the huge Moreton Bay Fig tree.  He checked it out, but, unfortunately no sign announced what type of tree it was.  No help there, until... a few weeks later my husband came home and said, he still didn't know what type of tree it was but he knew what to do with it.  Hmmm.  The tree in Balboa park had been drastically pruned, cut all the way back to bare branches, all those awful twigs removed.  We figured the gardeners in Balboa park  know what they are doing so we followed suit.  I wish I had taken pictures of the pruning because it was quite a site.  But here is what it looked like after we pruned it...  This was in late - March 2008

Pretty sad site!  And we, more than once, wondered if we had made a horrid mistake!  I spent hours on the computer trying and trying to identify our tree.  Well, after much looking and I still don't know how I arrived at the information - a bit of luck, I think.  I discovered it to be a ... drum roll, please...  Cockspur Coral tree.  Never heard of it, yeah me neither, but it happens to be the native flower of Argentina.    And we were right to follow the lead of the Balboa Park Gardeners because they like heavy pruning every year ( you could even cut it back to a stump)!

Well, here is our tree now, just 4 months later...

Now, I can't say I am totally sure I adore my tree yet.  I think I will need to see how next years pruning goes before I am ready to give it a thumbs up.  If it is as much trouble as last year I may be tempted to take the whole thing out and start fresh.  But, maybe I will learn to love it, after all.  I have to admit the change over the past 4 months is quite remarkable.

And down came the mulberry tree!!

It's true.  It's gone!  The bane of my existence has been removed.  Here is the last of it coming down.  My hero (my dear sweet hubby) in the foreground with his able helper, (our son)Jared.  And, no one sustained any injuries!!!As many of you know this tree has caused us much distress over the past two summers. Our dear sweet Lily just loves the endless berries that this fruiting mulberry drops all over the ground.  Her tummy however does not like the countless berries that she manages to ingest before we are able to chase her away from the berry spot.  This makes for some rather unpleasant clean up when she, for lack of a better way to put it, "can't hold her berries".  The berries also happen to make a horrid mess on shoes and them subsequently on the floor of my house.  It has just been an all around unpleasant relationship with this tree.  And quite a chore cutting it back and now finally down.  We have disposed of truck loads of this tree and there is at least one more load still piled up in my backyard!!  Farewell Mulberry Tree!!!  I will not shed a tear.