Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2015 - 49

they look now that helps me imagine
her doing it. And what I imagine is
her out there thinking like a tree. Not
like just any tree, but a tree of the
species that she is about to plant.
Thinking, not just like the little stick
of a sapling she's holding, but also
like the mature tree that it would in
time become. This is the sense I get,
whenever I turn in at her driveway at
her place. My whole body relaxes,
driving among these loved trees, and
not just because my long journey is at
an end.
Sitting at Susan's, looking out
across the tops of the trees toward
Humpback Mountain, is a great and
peaceful pleasure. A mug of coffee
warming my hands, I watch the
crowns of the tallest of her trees fired
by day's first light. The last time I did
this was the morning after
Thanksgiving. No one else was up
yet; the sun was shining; Humpback
was frosted in rime. I was about to
drive home, and was wondering
which of the trees below me had
yielded its first small harvest of
pecans that fall. I'd barely gotten in
the door a couple of days earlier
when Susan thrust a paper bag of
unshelled nuts into my hands. "Look
at this!" she said. Her eyes shone, like
a mother whose child had finally finished the Ph.D. dissertation the whole
family had given up hope she'd ever
complete. Susan had been anticipating a pecan harvest for decades. And
in 2014, there it was at last. 

Above: A lovingly pruned Japanese maple catches late afternoon light at the top
of Susan Hastings' driveway. Left: Tree-planter extraordinaire Susan Hastings.
BOUNTY ON THE LAND

SUSAN'S TREES
Over the years, Susan Hastings has planted
seven or eight different oak species, two
maples, two pecans, a couple of southern
magnolias, some "fun" trees (a ginkgo,
sweetgums), a few conifers, "some trees
people have given me," and some ornamental
trees (most as memorials, when her dogs
died). Though the field's filling up, she's still
adding a few trees, most recently an apple.
Over the years she's lost a few - to critters large
and small, occasionally by accidentally mowing one down, when it was too small to see in
the tall grass. She planned where each would
go by standing on her deck, thinking about
their height at maturity.
"They looked awfully marooned out there,
those little sticks with all that space between
them. People used to laugh at me, in the
beginning." she says. That's not the reaction
now. -ECH

DIG A HOLE, DIG A BIG HOLE:
HOW TO GET A TREE OFF TO A
GOOD START
"Dig a hole for the root ball twice as
wide as the roots relaxed (spread
out) but only as deep as the rootball," Susan Hastings says. "If it's a
tree with a taproot, be sure to dig
the hole deep enough so the taproot won't get scrunched."
Once the tree is in the hole, add
dirt back, packing it firmly as you go
so there are no air pockets. Fill the
hole to the original ground level,
then give the tree lots of water.
You'll need to keep it moist for the
first year, while its root system
establishes. After that it should hold
its own. -ECH

MARCH/APRIL 2015 | 49
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2015

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