Black Thumbs

We have had a love/hate relationship with the trees in our yard the last few years.  Honestly, we've had a love/hate relationship with anything we've attempted to grow.  Let's recap:

First there was the this tree.

It stopped growing on half it's side.  Mike ended up fertilizing it, chopping off an entire side of the tree limbs, fertilizing it some more.  Then he ultimately dug down and chopped up some of the roots that were strangling the main part of the tree.

This year this tree actually grew normal sized leaves on the remaining buds.  He's giving it another year before he cuts it down, though he still doesn't hold much hope for it.

Then there was this tree.  We fertilized it with leftover fertilizer pegs from the first tree and it resulted in what you see below:

Which led us to last year's planting where we discovered we had another Dr. Seuss character look-alike tree:

Let's not forget my part in this!  Take my "Figure Eight Tomatoes" followed by the "Conjoined Twins"

We can't be trusted!  It was proven this week when we looked in the backyard and Mike all but yelled, "I surrender!"

A very large limb on this tree has bit the dust.

I offered that maybe it just needs it's roots to be cut up like the tree in front.  Mike is Mr. Doom-and-Gloom in the tree department.  He said he thinks it has a disease. 

At lunch today we decided it was time to head back to Minnesota Valley Garden Center where we have found the tree expert, Bernie.  Bernie is an interesting fellow...and incredibly hairy...but he certainly knows his trees!  He led us through the steps to save our front tree, so I have complete faith that he'll get us through this as well.

While we are there, we are going to ask him to point us to lawn experts.  There is an ongoing debate in our house as to which is worse:

OR

These we have no problem growing.