Night gardening

Last weekend my wife and I drove down to the local tree farm ‘Green Acres‘ to see what was available and if they had any discounts for the off-season. Sure enough, they had a 40% sale on all their trees. We looked at the ones we were interested in, and promised to return once we had figured out how many we needed. We spent the rest of the day measuring out our yard and all the permanent fixtures in it, including the sheds, trees, concrete pathways and leech lines. We drew a to-scale diagram of everything on our property and figured out just what we needed to add additional privacy to our little piece of earth.

On Sunday, we returned to the tree farm and placed an order for nine trees, including six arborvitaes, two white pines, and a fat albert. Since they were already booked, they couldn’t deliver them that day, but promised to deliver first thing the next day. They gave us some little flags to place in the yard, and told us they would place the trees by them. Sure enough the next day when I was on break at work, my wife had sent me a text message to say they had arrived right before she left for work, and that the trees looked fantastic. I checked the weather and saw that the weather was going to plummet that night and snow was forecast. I stayed late anyway, completing additional projects, and got home right as it got dark. Having thought ahead the day before, I had pre-dug the holes for the trees where the flags were placed.

I pulled into the garage, set my belongings on the table and ate a quick dinner with my wife. We found the headlights from our camping gear and I threw on some camo pants and a rain jacket, and set to work lowering the trees, straightening them up, and burying them in the ground while my wife judged how straight they were.

The temperature was plummeting, but with just a thermal undershirt and a jacket over top, I was sweating. I wanted to get all nine trees into the ground and firmly packed in before the temperature dropped below zero. It was tiring work, but in just under three hours I had all nine trees firmly packed into the ground, just as the first snow flakes began to fall. We gave them a couple buckets worth of water each and I stumbled into the  house to take a hot shower before going to bed.

I woke up in the morning, stiff and sore, but elated to see what looked like Christmas outside. There was a light dusting of snow covering our newly planted trees, and the yard looked amazing.

Some people wonder how my wife and I have such an amazing life. It’s simple really, we go to extraordinary lengths to create it. We don’t allow life to happen to us. We create it with every step we take. In this case, we bought evergreen trees in an off season to get a deep discount, and I buried them in the dark after a long shift at work just to get them ready before the snow fell. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to do extraordinary things.