Steel Magnolia

Have you ever seen the movie "Steel Magnolias"? It's an excellent movie. A classic tear jerker. Urban dictionary defines steel magnolia as "a southern woman who is strong and independant yet very feminine." I'd like to think I am a steel magnolia. If only I was from the South. 

The reason I bring this up is because we are getting a tree cut down in our yard today. It's a pretty large tree, but nothing special and it is leaning towards the house. We figured better to be safe than sorry and cut it down before it falls onto our house in a storm. 

D and I have been talking about what to plant in it's place. I have always LOVED flowering trees. The kinds with light pink petals that cover the ground beneath them like a blanket. There's nothing prettier. Like this:

I started doing research on flowering trees that would be hardy for Minnesota winters. We are in zone 4, so I used this key piece of info and decided on a Magnolia tree. There are many different kinds of Magnolia trees, but not all are hardy in zone 4. I used the website Monrovia.com and searched through their plant catalog to narrowed to a few different types (images are from google):

Royal Star Magnolia: white flowers,  grows 10-15 ft tall

Ann Magnolia: reddish purple flowers,  grows 10-15 ft tall

Leonard Messel Magnolia: pink and white flowers,  grows 10-15 ft tall

Saucer Magnolia: white and pink flowers,  grows 20-25 ft tall

While all of these are INCREDIBLY GORGEOUS, I had envisioned a bit larger tree- like the saucer magnolia. When we informed our neighbor that we would be cutting down a tree just to give him a heads up and be neighborly, he pointed to a little tree in his yard that turned out to be an Ann Magnolia. How cool will it be to have 2 magnolia trees next to each other?! The Ann is beautiful, but pretty small. Even his tree is only about 10' tall. I can already start to see buds on it. I know it will probably take years for our tree to get as tall as the trees in the image above, but I know they will be stunning when they do. 

We have spring fever already in Minnesota and it's only January! We will have to wait until at least April to plant the tree, but until then we will keep our eyes out for the saucer magnolias. :)

UPDATE- OK, so the tree is cut down and I have to apologize to Mother Nature because I do feel guilty killing a perfectly good tree. It just wasn't worth it falling on the house at some point. We decided to take the cheapest route possible with the tree, having the arborist just basically lay it on the ground. Definitely a job to leave to a professional, even though my tree climbing husband assured me he could have done it himself. I think not. Ha. What remains of the tree is a huge mess in our yard since we decided to do all the cutting and clean up ourselves. By ourselves I mean my husband. 

Yikes. Luckily we have a good friend that is letting us borrow his chainsaw. With the tree down, it has definitely made a difference in how the house looks. It's much more visible. I think a flowering tree will look great in it's place! We may actually end up going with a smaller magnolia tree, possibly the Leonard Messel because D thinks a Saucer magnolia will be too tall. We will see what we can find come spring time. It may also be worth checking out local parks and arboretums that have magnolia trees for us to compare.