The Maple Tree

Since we've been in our apartment there's been an old plastic plant pot in the grass outside our patio. It looked abandoned as it wasn't really in anyone's "yard" and the plant that was living in the pot had long been deceased. The workers who have been renovating the complex carefully stepped around the pot, set up their ladders to either side of it and managed to go about installing siding with it in the exact same spot, 2 feet from the apartment wall.

One day a while back I was surprised to find among the weeds growing in the pot, a maple seedling about 6 inches tall. I waited another week or so to see if anyone might claim it and finally decided that since it seemed to have been abandoned for the past 6 weeks it was finders keepers.

I had some leftover potting soil from Big Red and went to work pulling out all the dead plant material surrounding the maple tree. Surprisingly, the tree was rooted below the dead plant roots and so all I had to do was pull the dead plant off the top and add more potting soil. The roots of the maple were hardly disturbed and now he thrives on our patio along with big red. We'll see if he drops all his leaves soon like all the grownups.