No more titty trees!

I call them "titty trees" - two builder-grade live oaks poking unceremoniously out of the front lawn of each tract home, right in the very center of the lawn, and in a line parallel to the house.

Aerial view, a bit oblique so mostly you see the tree shadows rther than the trees themselves, but they were planted where the circles are.

This generic planting practice violates every known rule of artistry, including the Rule of Thirds and the Diagonal Method.   It looks absolutely dreadful.  Unfortunately, we were not able to intercept our builder's landscape contractor before he accomplished this little aesthetic disaster.  There were just too many other things going on around the time of house completion. 

But that doesn't mean we have to live with it, and so yesterday we had one of the trees shifted. 

It would have been artistically ideal to move BOTH trees, but for realization of the cost sweet-spot (because it's not cheap to move trees), we decided to follow the 80/20 rule and shift just one.  Here you see the new spot stripped of sod, which we saved for re-laying in the spot from which the tree was to be taken. 

Most home improvements we DIY, but this job called for some hydraulic power:

Hail the tree-mover!

I expected Sigorney Weaver to appear at any moment.

First, a plug of soil was removed to make way for the tree.

Then the tree was lifted from its original location.

And then the tree was set into the new hole. 

The abandoned hole was filled by the machine, and then we restored the sod on top of it, for the final result!

You can already see that the yard has now been opened up, and has new potential because it's not chopped directly in half and blocked by the trees.  I can develop landscaping off the shallow diagonal element that this has created, and actually have that landscaping turn out well, which would not have been possible originally.  I'm very glad we paid to have the tree-mover come, instead of living with the previous ridiculous-looking set-up!!