H broke the apple tree we were trying to transplant

[2curlydogs]

We had mostly dug it up and he was wiggling the tree back and forth so I could get under it to cut the vertical roots.  And he grabbed onto a branch, pulled.... and the entire branch snapped off.  Said branch was about 1/3 of the tree (said tree also had pretty piss-poor structure, so that contributed).

The man tries so hard.  I think he hates the idea of cutting down trees more than treedimensional.  He just has terrible karma when it comes to these things (which I think he believes is related to snap-trapping a field mouse 3 years ago... which is why he now humanely traps them and releases them. don't.ask).

Between that and the fact that we had to cut the roots pretty close
on one side because the underground electrical ran right along/under said
tree....well, let's just say we now have a lot of apple wood for
smoking.

[simpsongal]

I'm sorry - at least you had tempered expectations going in. I hate losing a tree.

[nomad100]

Yikes, that stinks. 

But at least you can use the wood for smoking.  Yum! 

[treedimensional]

Sorry for your loss.
Stuff happens.
I actually recommend removals pretty regularly.

[2curlydogs]

tree - he came to me, like, 4 hours after it happened going "I still feel guilty."  He can be really silly sometimes.

Here's a couple pics of it (well, of the garden and then my son, but you can see in the background).  You can see what I was talking about with 60% of the tree growing "sideways" and the one branch growing straight up:

It's in the far right side here (that's our linden in the foreground):





The other 2 apple trees we transplanted were much nicer.  Not perfect, but better structure.