Meet Baby Spruce

Aug 10 2016baby spruce 1

Baby Spruce is a Dwarf Alberta Spruce we planted in September of 2013. He quickly took on a life of his own, including his own Twitter account. You can follow him @BabySpruce1.

I used to blog about him regularly on a website called Bubblews,com, but it went down the Internet black hole without any notice. So did most of the pictures I had when the computer died. I thought they were backed up, but can’t find that info.

So, here is a quick bullet-type journal of Baby Spruce’s milestones:

2013

September 29, 2013: Arrives at the Heepies home (Tom and Alex) in Des Plaines via Home Depot and happily settles into a wooden planter.
October 15, 2013: Survives his first crisis. A horribly unprofessional local tree removal service almost damaged him when removing a diseased tree from our yard. Luckily, we came home in time to save him.
October 22, 2013: His planter gets relocated and takes over the dead tree’s spot as it is placed on the remaining stump.
November 25, 2013: Sees first snow.
December 1, 2013: Adorns a Christmas postcard that gets mailed to friends..
December 4, 2013: Gets spruced up (decorated) for Christmas.
December 9, 2013: Gets covered with a blanket of heavy snow.
December 16, 2013: Gets a star topper.
December 21, 2013: Lights up for his first Winter Solstice.
December 25, 2013: Celebrates his first Christmas.

2014

January 1, 2014: Celebrates his first New Year’s.
January 31, 2014: Celebrates his first Chinese New Year.
February 14, 2014: Celebrates his first Valentine’s Day.
February 24, 2014: Makes the NASCAR champion’s (Brad Keselowski) official website.
March 3, 2014: Sends his first tweet.
April 22, 2014: Celebrates his first Earth Day.
June 21, 2014: Celebrates his first Summer Solstice.
July 4, 2014: Celebrates his first Independence Day.
September 27, 2014: Honorable mention on NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski’s website.
September 29, 2014: Celebrates his first birthday.

2015

May 10, 2015: Acquires tree sibling: Baby Vitae.
September 29, 2015: Celebrates his 2nd birthday.
November 20, 2015: Chicago Fox Meteorologist Tammy Souza posts pic of Baby Spruce to illustrate accumulated snowfall near O’Hare Airport.

2016

September 6, 2016: Becomes a cartoon.
September 29: Celebrates his 3rd birthday.

2017

June 7: Finally manages to confirm Twitter account.
June 20: Receives his first piece of fan mail.
July 15: Becomes a member of Postcrossing.

I realize there’s a lot in 2014 and not much after that, but that’s because 2014 was a year of many firsts. Plus, I am still trying to recover lost posts and will add info as I can. The same goes for pictures. We do decorate Baby Spruce for many holidays, special days and occasions and I had pictures for all, but can’t find most of them.

The links below the pictures I did manage to retrieve are to the defunct site, so unfortunately you can’t access them anymore. However, I am keeping them here in the hopes that some day I can retrieve the content (I already tried the Wayback Machine and only found a few of the early ones).

Pictures