"Master minds have master plans..."
I like doing “projects” and some take more planning than others. Sometimes it’s hard to get started knowing a project is going to take you a few hours a day for several weeks to get it finished. Lots of planning and head scratching. Some projects take very little thought and the fun comes in spontaneously and getting started is easy, it’s a spur of the moment type thing. As I have aged I like to think that I work smarter not harder because I can plan around previous mistakes. You learn from your mistakes and I guess the point of what I’m going to tell you hurls that idea into reverse. Plans just don’t always go like they should.
My tree project was something I had put on the back burner for years. They take so long to grow and I knew I needed to eventually do something. Last year I got a wild hair and decided it was time to go for it. It was simple to me, no need to plan this project, it called for pure execution- go to the nursery, buy the trees and stick them in the ground, water and WALA, mission accomplished. HA! Here’s the first deal, ya just don’t plant any tree anywhere. No problem, “I” had some things in mind. The Gal at the nursery, a 72 year old pure German from the old school would give me some ideas. Well, she did alright. Enough ideas to go back home and do a little “planning”. Got things all figured out and now I had a “plan” to execute, back in the saddle again! Bought the trees, all ten should fit in the back of my little Nissan pick-up, right? Sure… I was getting smart now, picked out and paid for the trees a few days before the Saturday I would haul them home. And, of course all of this was “OK’d” buy the nursery lady so… Did I tell you she is the kind of sweet endearing lady that had no problem in telling me to “keep quite” when I asked one too many questions? She is a total kill. If you work real hard and razz her enough she eventually will break down and smile and then get embarrassed :-) Anyway, I took a week off starting that Saturday and had planned on a nice leisurely vacation planting the trees and doing some other things around the house. Outside work for the most part because the weather was going to be beautiful. I figured a day or two on the trees and the rest of my projects on any given whim. No pressure, no problem, I am going to be leading the life of pure sanctity with a huge chunk of indiscriminate laziness!
Next thing ya know the BIG Saturday has arrived. For some reason, the bad weather system ahead of the good system decided to hang on for one more day. Hey, it’s no big deal and nothing a few tarps and bungy cords could not take care of. (Did I mention I live and work about an hour away from Boone, which is where the journey is going to begin?) And again, said German nursery lady has coached me ahead of time on what when how why and more, on the hauling of trees an hour away from their final hole-in-the-ground home. Earlier during the wee hours while trucking I had plenty of time to pull the strings tightly in on my new and improved “options” for bad weather plan. In just a few short hours I would be taking my live wonderful trees home and I was looking forward to a few hours of “festive" Saturday planting. In those hours the weather turned from some 70-80 degrees down to 40-50ish and felt like Antarctica with the stiff Northerly winds. Things were getting nasty, the project could become painful. No problem though because you just can’t stop the wheels of momentum from turning when it comes to spur-of-the-moment-good-planning and the accumulated days of progress! Now the time has arrived and off I go to pick up the trees. A lovely Saturday rain when I arrived at the nursery. Thank goodness the German nursery lady was so sweet to offer to have her people load my truck, tarp it down and in general, take care to package my goodies in a professional way. Yep, just what I wanted to hear and willingly agreed to. So what if it was going to take a few hours, no prob. I needed some lunch and my trucking buddy was up to the local tavern, which also served food, I’ll just give ol' Marlin a call and he’ll come and get me. He did, I had lunch, a couple of beers and a good conversation while the nursery people did their thing out in the lovely rain and cold. I wanted to feel bad but my $600 purchase kept telling me it was alright to have such wonderful help. My project pain was dimming by the minute, not because of the beer, but, thanks to my total lack of involvement. I could already feel the vacation laziness coming on and for the week ahead, it was going to be feeling mighty good.
The call came and the load was ready. I arrived and the first words out of the German nursery lady was to let me know the plan “she” had, did not work out because she thought I had a regular size truck. Yes, I failed to mention the size of my truck. I thought no problem, it was her plan, shouldn’t be anything to be concerned about, she, I’m sure has a “backup” plan and her options surely would be based on prior experience, which totally blows anything away that I could have come up with. So, there ya go, all was just dandy! We talked a bit, the German nursery lady, me and her people. We had smiles on our faces, all knowing and sharing the warm fuzzies of a job well done. All knowing it really sucked being outside in the cold miserable weather, really. Since I thought I would have the trees and all the associated tree stuff home by early afternoon I thought I better get going since it was “real late” in the later part of the afternoon. Not a big deal but the warm fuzzies would have to give way to the reality of an hour trip home. Getting home was now the most dominant part of the mission, planting trees when I got home was no longer an option. So I’m off and out of the nursery ready to start my adventure.
Wow, not picturing what ten trees and the associated tree stuff would look like in the back of my little truck, I was quite amazed at how the German nursery lady’s people loaded it. I never would have believed that all that “stuff” could be “stuffed” and tied down into such a tiny space. I mean, you never saw such a tied up bundle compressed and packed like this. Truly amazing in one way and in another, somewhat horrifying. Of course it all made sense to me because the German nursery lady told me they got everything to fit. I thought that was wonderful and did not suspect a thing. The load looked like it would ride just fine and according to “you know who” the trees would be just fine. Apparently branches, trees and leaves that are squished together like sardines eventually spring back to life once released from their bondage. And, I also had been warned to go slow, keep her under 50 mph so the wind does not blow off any more leaves than necessary. Oh, ok. So apparently there is some hidden percentage of leaves that can be ripped off a tree and it will tolerate it with grace. Because I needed to keep the speed down I new I would not have any problems with the dips in the road. Nope, the ass end of the truck shouldn’t bottom out on the road, even though it was really close to touching already because of the weight. Who would ever guess all that “stuff” would weigh that much. I wonder if a bigger full size truck like the one I have now would have worked better? Duh. In hind sight, of course where we all see clearly, I should have probably took out the tool box that rides on the front part of the pick up box itself, but, what the hey, that would have meant forethought. Ok, so we have to move forward. Ahhh. The truck is warmed up, my coat is off and I’m ready for a nice leisurely ride home. Me and my trees are finally homeward bound and the week ahead is all summed up to not having to go to work and being out of the big truck. Life is grand and I’m most grandiose.
Man, 47 miles really isn’t that far, is it? Doing 40-50 mph with a load on the truck so heavy that the front wheels feel like they might just be skimming the surface is like “having to” watch paint dry. I guess I needed the time to think and reorganize my reorganized plans anyway so no need to sweat the ride. Jeez, I didn’t realize the day could fly by so fast. Was it getting dark already? And there’s no way that it could snow, could it? I thought earlier, before I picked up the trees, that I would be planting some when I got home and now, getting them home would be the main objective for Saturday and Sunday I could unload the goods. That was before they were “compressed” by the human baling machines at the nursery. I suppose I would have to conjure up some help when I got home to get the goods decompressed and out into the cold fresh air, that should shock them back into the real world. Rick, my friend, came down to my house and we got the whole assorted affair unraveled. It was just about like releasing a wild animal back into it’s natural habitat, a somewhat momentous moment for the captivated and a memory of a life time for the two release’erze. Memory of a life time might be an overstatement. It was more like a feeling of getting home when you have been away from home for too long and getting things unpacked. The job was done for the day and although it did not go as planned it, went, went away that is.
Well it came back just as fast as it went away. Waking up with a sudden sense of urgency Sunday morning, I set out to plant my trees. Simple goals today, dig holes, plant trees. Simple, plant trees. Plant trees. It was going to be fun to see these natural works of art dotting my humble yard. Taking my yard one step more toward scenic beauty in just a few short hours. A few short hours later and about 20 degrees warmer, almost 90 now, I had all the things I needed to plant all my trees with all their assorted tree things so nicely provided by the German nursery lady. You just have to love that lady, she did not forget one thing. I mean not one thing, well, maybe one thing. She didn’t mention anything about the digging. You know if you look at a tree in a pot it looks pretty small. At least if you compare a “huge” tree pot to my tree pots, mine were looking on the very small “pot size” level. Pot size. Seems like one of those word combos that just don’t have any relevance. Well I found out that “pot size” has relevance when you start thinking about “hole size”. And hole size has relevance to “shovel size” which equates to effort and time. My dear German nursery lady never explained that part about “pot size” relating to “hole size” and in turn, what it would take to dig a hole about twice as big in volume in relation to a tree ball that would end up in it.
Another two hours later, sweating like I have never worked a day in my life, I have the first hole dug. I’m looking at the dirt now and wondering. I guess I’m going to have some dirt left over. Never thought about dirt being left over. Makes pretty good sense when you start thinking about pot, hole, tree-ball, shovel and effort relationships: naturally the end result is excess dirt. No problem. With an acreage and a green thumb, good dirt never goes to waste. But where you put good dirt can be painfully crucial because everyone knows that dug dirt is heavy and you never want to haul dirt to far away from where it will be used when you use it. Trouble here is that dirt has a low priority even though it is good dirt. Who in their right mind knows in advance where good dirt can be used? So you have to put the good dirt somewhere and that somewhere is “out of the way”. That’s why they call it a pile of dirt somewhere, and even though being the owner of “good” dirt, others see it as a “pile” of dirt. So you need a place where it is kind of hidden. In this respect the dirt just becomes a “bunch” of dirt. You ever hear someone say, “I need a bunch of dirt” , and then ask “you got a pile somewhere?” Don’t feel bad if you haven’t, but up here in this town it’s a common everyday question, really.
So, I found that “somewhere” spot and I got my old antique wheel barrow out of the shed to haul the first “bunch” of dirt to the new, yet to be made “pile”. I call it a pile “now” because everybody knows that when you are “working” the dirt, as in shoveling, moving, dumping and all that, it is always consider a pile. So a pile of dirt has two meanings. I imagine that’s because “other” people see you playing around with the dirt, therefor it’s not hidden and can not be consider a “bunch” of dirt yet. Oh well, it gets technical and all boils down to one common denominator- dirt is cheap. The more dirt you have, no difference be it a pile or a bunch, the better off you will be because you can never have too much of a cheap commodity. And remember, someone is always looking for a bunch of dirt because there just never seems to be enough dirt around at the right time. I don’t quite get that part because I’m going to have scads of dirt. Ten trees with holes proportional huge compared to the pot size makes for about a truck load, that’s my thinking. I wonder if all the dirt left over would be as heavy and make my pick-up truck squat like the trees did? I’ll leave that alone. Now back to my wheel barrow. I have to tell you what a fine piece of work this thing is. It’s really heavy duty as far as wheel barrows go. You go to the store now and buy one for fifty bucks and you can spin it around on the tip of your finger it’s so light; just like a Harlem Globetrotter spins a basket ball. You can consider these “light duty” but surprisingly they can take a lot of work. But my wheel barrow is really “heavy duty”, like I said. I don’t think I could even lift it totally off the ground so I would guess it to weigh around 150 pounds with nothing in it. Cool huh? You know that sucker can haul a freight train if you could stuff one in it. Humm? The handles are a little rough and not nice and smooth and round like the ones at the store. These are built out of good old solid oak, probably hand hewn, not pretty, not smooth. I think when it was made the guys back then must have had like these huge paws to grip the handles cause I can hardly get my hand around them. If I try hard the square corners dig into my palms a bit, and that might have been the idea back then, digging in provides a bit of a grip otherwise not available. I don’t know. I do know it’s old because it has a steel wheel instead of a pneumatic type wheel that provides a little cushion to the ride or push or whatever you call “moving” what’s in the wheel barrow. That’s alright though, I would much rather have the girth and solid feel of an all steel wheel. With a few squirts of motor oil it should start spinning like a top! You don’t want to have any extra resistance when hauling a bunch of dirt to a pile that is about a hundred yards away from where you are working. Whew, doesn’t it just make ya sweat thinking about it? 90 degrees and rising, digging holes and moving dirt. It just don’t get no better than that for a guy!
One hole dug, one trip made to the pile, 6 hours later and I figure there just has to be a better way. It’s Sunday, I’m soaking wet, have been working my ass off all day and look what I have gotten done on this vacation in paradise. At this rate, I’m screwed, I’ll be digging this crappy dirt all week and I won’t have these stupid trees planted ever, no, not ever. Ok, so I figured I was getting a bad attitude and that was not good. It was suppose to be fun. I lost my head just for a moment, well, maybe several long moments. Time to have a cool one and rethink the entire situation.
With no doubt in my mind, I’ll have to take a new fresh approach to the problem. My good dirt has now become problem dirt, I know this to be a key issue. Have you ever moved a load of dirt that weighs as much as you do in a wheel barrow that weighs almost about as much as you do? By the time you lift it up and keep it balanced you have the idea floating around in your head that “something” is wrong here. Then you start “moving” the wheel barrow. If herding cats is “impossible” this is the next best thing that is “possible” and it can be done. I NEW I could do it, after all, your talking about a man who as a kid pushed a red wagon stacked full of bricks up hills as big as Mount Baker and did so with only a few short breaks for nearly six blocks. Count’em, SIX CITY BLOCKS! You ever seen a 7-8 year old kid sweat rain? I know what you’re thinking and it has nothing to do with being stubborn, it has everything to do with will and determination and most of all, a lack of using the proper tools for the job at hand. As a kid, understandable. No money, no tools equal all labor. As a man this problem goes away because money spent on tools and equipment have a net return/gain of saving labor so you always have to buy tools and have tools around. Simple indeed and the key element in solving the key problem of moving dirt from point a to point b.
I’ll just use my pickup to haul the dirt “way over” to the pile. Hey, I’m on to it now. I can also use the pick up to haul the trees way over to the holes that I dig. This will work much better than using a two wheel cart and the bungy cords. I won’t drop anymore trees on the ground cause the cart wheels fall into them little ground ruts. I don’t have to worry about taking any more tree leaves or branches off from the falls! Like that would really hurt them after their little trip from Boone.
Now, I have one tree done and the day is about over. The yard looks like a battle field of garden tools and dirt moving equipment. I didn’t tell you it takes a certain amount of experimentation to make the transition from “old” wheel barrow thinking to “new” pickup hauling thinking did I? Well it does. And it produces about 45 thousand trips in and out of the garage and sheds with all kinds of devices and gadgets. These “things” are what Einstein probably called “tools of the trade”. They were more like “tools of mass destruction” that fine Sunday. So it’s time to give it up, after all I’m on vacation and there is no use what-so-ever in overworking on my days off. I went to bed after a good hot shower feeling like a truck had ran over me. I guess I wasn’t use to all the fresh air. Maybe it was because I hauled around thousands of pounds by hand? Nah. Maybe it was cause I worked my brain until it almost started smoking? Nah. I do that all the time. I new what ever it was, I would be feeling better the next morning and ready to go for round two.
I woke up feeling really good on Monday morning. At least until I tried to move. Just picture a board with no joints trying to get out of bed. Ahh, yes, I exaggerate just a wee bit on this. I was stiff but not stiff enough to keep me from my appointed mission. I’ll get these sweet tree-lings planted today and the great satisfaction of my work will bestow me with great pride in a job well done. Not that I have any pride, but, more that I have proud-ness, whatever that means. A question begs at this point. What do people feel when they do a project and it turns out to be a piece of junk, a work so bad that it makes people squeal? Do they feel proud? Did they take pride in their endeavor. This is beyond my logic and I cannot answer it. Back to Monday. Well let’s just go to Monday night. Two trees in the ground and they do look good. Eight more to go. Do the math and considering I felt worse Monday, more like dying, we have now come to the fact that the word deadline is hopping around somewhere. Man, this is quite the deal Jeff. It was all going to be simple and now we have a deadline cause the math proves we have so much work in a day that can be done before we feel like dying. Tuesday is much better. The old body is starting to come alive. Muscle is rippling. It’s now talking like it needs work. It feels almost good to think about grunting in the trees. I put down 4 trees in less time than it took to plant two, yesterday. Wednesday was even more productive and I almost felt the urge to haul dirt to the pile in the wheel barrow. I almost had the urge to call the German nursery lady and give her a good piece of my mind, all in fun of course, to never, I mean never let anyone take home ten trees and let them believe they are going to plant them all in one day. I didn’t call her. I did feel good and all the trees were in the ground, I was happy, they were happy. Everyone was happy, even Molly. She acquired the natural sense all dogs have to dig. She dug in the holes where I dug when I would leave to go get something or do something else. She would dig in the piles of good dirt as if to say they were not placed or piled correctly. So life was Grand again until the trees started dying.
Everyone knows you have to water trees, right? Yes, of course they do. I knew it. I just didn’t realize how much or how often. By common sense and via advice from the GNL I was not to far off in my thinking. Probably a good watering every other day. Get the calculator out and here come more issues. For one thing you don’t plant trees right next to the house so your “hose” can reach them to water. You plant them in “excess” reach of your hose so you can add more hoses to the original hose. All said and done it only takes a half hour or so to get the hoses out and stretch them across the scenic vista. No big deal. Let’s talk about water. Calculating “that” always comes at the end of the month. When normal water usage is a couple of thousand gallons and you step it up to 6000 gallons plus, you have another light go off. It’s the light of economics. No big deal. What’s $75 bucks a month extra for water for a few months? Think of how long it takes 6000 plus gallons of water to trickle out the end of the hoses that are spread across the scenic vista. Now I have a freak’n part time job as a water boy. No pay. Not even associated with a major sporting event! Ok. No problem. I like being outside and found play in the mist of my new job. You see Molly loves to eat water being sprayed out of the end of a hose. Yes, I discovered this amazing thing just by squirting her and observing her reaction turned action. She is a water hound. Great! No problem to squirt another few hundred gallons of water at Molly. Should help the dry grass grow. Did I mention the drought we had that summer? Well, it’s only water and I am NOT going to let my trees dry up and die even if it takes double the watering and work to keep them going. So what you have here is a perfect solution for someone who might be bored and have nothing to do. It was wonderful to have accomplished such a project, yes, even with a few headaches and minor problems. I’m sure it could have been worse. Well, it got worse.
Did you know rabbits like to eat new trees? And dogs like to chase rabbits? I knew about dogs and rabbits but never thought a rabbit could skin a tree overnight. I only knew I was going to skin me a rabbit or two if I lost one of the trees. And by gosh, if Molly caught one of them rabbits, even if she did run all over the stinking little town of Lohrville, I would be grateful to her. It would overrule the hassle of walking up and down the streets yelling for her after a sudden rabbit chase began. MOLLY, COME HERE! You know people look at you like your weird or something when you yell at a dog that is not there. How is she going to get here, if she won’t come to here without me yelling? When she is there it’s similar to a “pile” of dirt that nobody sees. I suppose it would be ok if she came to me after I yelled and then whomever I thought was watching me so I can feel silly, could see what I’m yelling at. I think they think I’m yelling at some kid? Not my kid. No Molly in the brood. Eventually Molly would come back and I spent a day “wrapping” the trees with anti-rabbit tree wrap. All the rabbits could do now was to keep eating through my porch lattice and occasionally treat Molly to an endless endurance test through the streets of Lohrville. No big deal, it could be worse. Well, what is worse?
Would you call spending a $100 on a shock collar for Molly worse? If you talk to Molly prior to the “incident” she would have said it’s no big deal because all it is, is a collar that doesn’t do anything. She would say “he (being me) points that thing at me and tells me what to do”, like I’m suppose to understand what the heck he wants me to do”? If you would ask her the same question after the “incident” she would be much more thoughtful and her reply would definitely point to the situation as being worse. But, that’s another story and this one has to end somewhere. And Molly is very happy, healthy and growing, just like the trees. Life is grand.