Man Down! Man Down!

We lost a tree in the storm last night. A little one though; maybe 20'. It was a scrawny little willow tree that USED TO live under the shady protection of the neighbors' evergreens, and has never had to deal with the weight of heavy snow before. Poops. :(

We were hoping that it would grow thick and strong in it's new found sunshine, but alas, it was not meant to be. Right now the only thing that's keeping it from being stretched across our front lawn is a wooden bench that sits underneath it - it's propped up against the back of the bench, jutting out over the yard at a 45 degree angle.

I called Brett at work to tell him about it, and our conversation went like this:

Cat: we have a tree down.

Brett: yeah, I know. go shake the snow off it though and maybe it'll straighten itself.

Cat: um...it's not bowed over, it's tipped over from the roots up, and the snow has melted off the branches already...

Brett: well just shake the snow off and push it back up then.

Cat: THERE IS NO SNOW LEFT TO SHAKE OFF, and if I push it, it will just fall the other way.

Brett: you don't know that; it's not all the way down.

Cat: it's coming out of the ground at an angle, I'm not pushing it anywhere. The ground is probably like, loose.

Brett: but it's still in the ground, so it could be fine if you just push it...

Cat: no! maybe later if we stake it or something, but it won't stand up by itself - the bench is holding it up.

Then the conversation ended, because Brett had to get back to work. But what I forgot to tell him is that the rhodie that fell down in the LAST storm also fell down again in this one. He propped that one up with a stake awhile ago because it was still in the ground and still looked green and everything, but now it's down again.

I'd like to be able to save both the rhodie and our puny willow tree, but I don't want to just keep staking them until they finally die from the stress of falling over in every gd storm we have. Does anyone out there know how to steak a tree for REAL? Can it even be done once they're old and fully grown?

The rhodie is probably only like 6-7', but it's really bushy, so it's kind of top-heavy. The willow is reeeally scrawny so it's not very top-heavy, but we were hoping to keep it because it *kind of* *a little bit* obstructs our view of the neighbors' house. And we can't afford to have another pre-grown tree planted there right now, so we were just hoping that the willow would fill out.