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Love is in the air, and not just because Valentine’s Day is two days away.
On Saturday, while beautiful couples everywhere celebrate their love, the Auburn Tigers will be busy planting two 35-foot oak trees at the intersection of College Street and Magnolia Avenue.
For the uninitiated, that’s Toomer’s Corner, where Tigers fans have celebrated wins by rolling the oaks with toilet paper for decades. Alabama fan Harvey Updyke Jr. poisoned the iconic original trees after the 2010 Iron Bowl. The oaks died and had to be removed, while Updyke spent six months in jail.
According to al.com, College Street and Magnolia Avenue will close near Toomer’s Corner from 7:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. while the university plants the new trees. The oaks are en route from MeadWestvaco nursery in Ehrhardt, South Carolina.
Auburn provided a glimpse of the trees in transit on Thursday.
The new #auburnu oaks are big trees! We are planting this one and the other Saturday at Toomer's Corner. #WarEagle pic.twitter.com/pfTQhiqnhb
— Mike Clardy (@mike_clardy) February 12, 2015
New College Street Oak on its way home #auburnoaks pic.twitter.com/1FTvcxxcNR
— Mike Clardy (@mike_clardy) February 12, 2015
We told you the new #AuburnOaks are big! They are being loaded and heading to campus. See you Saturday! #WarEagle pic.twitter.com/TUd3VSWMQj
— Auburn University (@AuburnU) February 12, 2015
University spokesman Mike Clardy told ESPN in November that the entire project should cost about $900,000. (Updyke is supposed to pay court-ordered restitution of $796,731, and as of September, hadn’t yet reached triple figures.)
Auburn also is going to plant trees grown from the original Toomer’s Corner oaks using acorns, installing 30 of the live oaks along a new brick walkway that will connect Samford Hall to Toomer’s Corner. The trees, which the university began growing more than 12 years ago, are more than 15 feet tall. The walkway should be completed in 2016.
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
