Planting a tree

Today we planted a tree for my dad. We tried planting trees here once before-- the first summer we moved here when we were young and clueless and full of hope. The deer ate them within hours of getting them home. We couldn't let that happen to my dad's tree, so this time we had a plan. First, decide on a spot. This would normally take me months, but today was tree planting day, so I used the world wide internet to find out how close a tree can be to a house, measured out the distance, and marked a line in the dirt.

Next step, dig a hole. But how big? I called our friendly local nursery... they turned out not to be so friendly and refused to tell me the top secret dimensions. So we just started digging. I was able to dig about 4" before hitting massive rock number one. I filled my little hole with water and waited for Mark to come with the pickaxe. We then alternated between shovelling, watering, and pick axing for the next couple hours. Logan supervised. Our hole digging technique was finely honed during our deck building experience last year-- luckily there was only one hole to dig today, and it did not require use of the ladle to get out that last 36th inch.

When we decided enough was enough, we loaded into the van and headed to the nursery. Despite their curmudgeonly-ness, we went to the local store anyways. That's what my dad would have done. They gradually warmed to us, and by the end we were good friends. Logan's charm had a lot to do with that. That and the fact that their only other customers spilled a whole box of bulbs and they ended up mixed in with all the different types of bulbs. Curmudgeon was not happy about that.

We picked the perfect tree, dug it out of its spot, and loaded him into the van. Mark sat in the back holding the tree with one hand and the back gate, which can no longer be trusted to stay up on its own, with the other. I drove home at 20 mph so as not to lose a single leaf from our perfect tree.

We arrived home, made a few further adjustments to our hole, spent another hour pounding in stakes, and then we were ready to plant. In went the tree, we snapped a few pictures, and then up went the giant wire mesh fence. We're pretty sure it'll keep out the deer. The elk will probably laugh. Unfortunately we forgot to take off the piece of burlap that was wrapped around the trunk of the tree to protect it during its journey home. Now it is encased in our high security fence and will be there until the weather rots it away. At least we removed the big orange "sold" tag.

Below you can see all the rocks that came out of that hole. Well maybe not all of those came from this hole... but you get the general idea.




Happy birthday Daddy. We miss you more everyday.