What do you mean by "shoveled in some good soil"?

Josh

give it a good spray down with soapy water in the evening or early morning. if it still has pests on it after a few days spray it down with some insecticide.

clear out any grass or weeds growing within 3-4 feet of the tree and put some mulch down.

Josh

Well, the tree was half out of the ground... we had literally knocked it over, again, I feel like we severed about half the roots...

so we dug out a bunch of what was there, and we took some good soil... a mixture of compost and the old soil that we had dug out and piled it back in. Propped the tree back up, and then tamped more of the good soil around the base.

Poor lovely tree... I hate to see a plant abandoned and abused.
If there is scale on it, I would suggest stripping the lower branches off from just above the ground level to a couple of feet above the ground (if the tree is more than 4 feet tall) and place an ant poison around the lower trunk to prevent ants from harvesting scale.
- I like "Terra" brand which is made from boric acid, because the ants appear to love its' taste, eat it and then go home to die.
-I put a small cardboard box over the little mat with the poison on it, and I cut small "door holes" on the sides of the box for the ants to get in. This prevents my cat from licking the poison off.

I'd also feed the tree after it has gotten over any transplant shock with liquid 8-8-8 to 10-10-10.

Love will heal.

Lux

Well put and very kind Lux and all

Mike