I couldn't find a way to upload pics on here, so I'm using ImgBB... I hope this works:
The first pic is with me facing East. That big oak tree gives most of the morning shade, and I'm thinking about having it taken down.
In the second and third pics, you can see that my tree's stem is about 2' tall; maybe 3' once you consider the height of the leaves. I just planted everything last week so the irises aren't really standing up too well, but they're tough and will do better next year.
The fourth pic is with me facing West. I took the pics at around 4pm, and you can see that most of the front yard is being shaded by trees on the other side by now. That's why I chose this specific location, it will get the most sun here. The only other area with as much sun would be right up against the house, but it would still only get afternoon and evening sun since the dogwood (in the far right of the pic) would block morning sun.
I'm planning to run a sprinkler system all over my front and back yard, but it's going to be about $1,000 in pipes! So that might be a plan for this Fall, maybe November (depending on the whole COVID things, really). Getting a soaker over there is going to be tricky, though, I'll have to run pipes under my cement driveway.
The guy I got it from told me to fertilize it heavily, but I couldn't find anything on Google about what mixture is best... so thanks for that info! And I didn't realize that the soil in that area is so red; the top 3 or 4" of soil is nice and black from my soil treatments in the past, but once I dug a bit it was still clay. So I'm concerned that it's going to be too thick for this tree, no matter what I do :-(