Happy Birthday, Tree!

Here’s something I haven’t blogged about yet, really, because it’s been a giant pain in my husbands butt since the day we moved in:

We inherited a half of an acre lot, a backyard of dead grass, and a broken sprinkler system. Since moving in, Eli has fixed the sprinklers, and seeded the back yard so that it will hopefully send out new shoots by next spring. There are still huge bald patches, but it’s gotten considerably better.

Over the weekend, his parents came down with the intention of helping me dig up some areas to plant my tulips that I have being shipped to me from Holland (Michigan.) However, when I mentioned that I had actually originally wanted a tree in the back corner, and thought it would be cute to plant flowers around the tree, well, it quickly became a way bigger project.

My apple-less apple tree.

His dad used a handy contraption called a rototiller  and dug up the back corner of our lot. We discovered some amazing soil underneath all the weeds, and all of us gathered outside to plant, what we called “Vivien’s Happy Birthday Tree.”

I also planed some narcissus flowers around the base of the tree (and the back part is still dug up in anticipation of tulips. Narcissus flowers have another special meaning: they are my best friend’s birth month flower.

Hopefully they will actually look like this.

I wanted a tree that would turn red in the fall, so we got an “Autumn Maple.”

While we were planting the tree, Eli’s dad kept mentioning the “ceremony” of planting something as meaningful as a tree. It didn’t hit me then, but thinking about the Happy Birthday Tree since then has made me realize some things. Vivien is turning one the year that we planted this tree. Next fall, she and the tree (hopefully) will be bigger, and stronger. They will bloom, and develop into their own independent beings as the years pass.

They will grow up together, on OUR property, in OUR home. 

Welcome to our backyard, Happy Birthday Tree. 

Thanks for making me stop for a second, and think about the bigger things in life.

Trees are your best antiques.  ~Alexander Smith