Saving the Apple Tree

Our Apple tree had a brush with death yesterday and we still don't know if it will make it! As you can see the lovely backhoe behind the tree was brought here to grade out our dirt. As it was being graded, it made a tight turn and the hydrolic line ruptured spraying...yes you guessed it, hydrolic fluid all over the tree, along with that black, sticky, goopy, greasy stuff all over it too! You can't really see it in the pictures, but the branches, leaves, and the newly budded apples are shining with an oily cover. In the second picture, if you look at the dark dirt surrounding the trunk of the tree...no it is not wet dirt..that is oil! We have tried spraying it with water and soap and soap and water and using towels to wipe off as much oil and the black goopy stuff as we can! We will not be eating any of the apples it will produce this season, and if the poor tree does live by some miraculous intervention, we will have to make sure that all of the dirt surrounding the area of the apple tree is replaced before we put grass in because it could also kill the grass later. Ahhh!! What a nightmare. It has taken so long for the dirt to be graded in the first place, but now it will take longer(the repair man has to fix the backhoe on-site..if you turn it back on it will just start spraying again) and that our apple tree might die and then have to pay for it do dug up and disposed of OR we will end up doing the labor ourselves :( Funny while I was wiping off the black stuff it reminded me of those specials on discovery channel where the animal people are saving those poor ducks from oil spills and cleaning them up...except for me it's an apple tree :) I guess we will just have to cross our fingers!