We moved to this home in the rural Washington woods 17 years ago, and, though it might sound counterintuitive, one of the first things I did as we settled in was to begin to plant more trees.
Granted, there were towering trees already on the land: Two huge cedars frame my office window as I sit and type these words, and those two trees have many stately brethren nearby. There is an expansive tree farm to the south of our place, and there is also State Forest land about a half-mile away and the quiet trails there are part of my route when I go running. A neighbor who lives down the road recently told me she’s thinking about naming her place “Heavenly Grove Farm.”
In short, there are a lot of trees around here. Nevertheless, it seemed altogether logical to me that I plant even more...so I did.
The local Conservation District has a plant sale every spring, and one can get a bundle of ten doug fir seedlings for $10. The plants that I bought when we first moved here were cute-as-heck babies, most about 10-inches high when I put them in the ground. Today some of those doug firs are taller than our two-story house, and fruit trees we planted have now become quite a productive little orchard. I suspect that, over the years, we've probably planted over 200 trees.
Anyway, it snowed yesterday morning, and the trees looked amazing. I ran around with my camera taking pictures of my tree babies, now well on their way to being grown-ups, and I felt like a bit like a proud parent. I think I might put a bumper sticker on my car that says: “My trees are cooler than your honor student.”
If you click on the images, you can see the trees at a size befitting their swell-ness.
