When Jeanne and I moved into our Waverly Way home, back in the year 2000, there stood a huge water oak (Quercus nigra) between our house and our neighbor to the east.

Several years later, that oak died, and so our neighbor had to take it down. But it left some acorns behind!

In 2010, you can just see a sapling poking its head out of the bushes, in front of the flowering dogwood:

The next year, it’s making a bit of progress, though it’s hard to pick it out among all the other volunteers.

By 2014, with its root system just the way it wants it, the oak has leapt up.

Here is the tree now, on May 22, 2021. Roughly a decade of growth. It’s more than 60 feet tall. Look to the left. That’s a white oak (Quercus alba) that I myself planted probably five years before that water oak even thought about germinating.

Sixty feet tall in 10-12 years!