July 7th, 2017
What's the Midas touch? Cause I need to talk to the person who got some letters screwed up and gave me the freaking "minus touch"! Nathanael and I have had just the worst luck with planting trees. Through the course of this year and a half we have successfully planted and murdered 98 Austree willows, 49 Green Giant Arborvitae, and 16 apples trees... Before you get mad and think we're just neglectful plant parents, most of it wasn't entirely our fault. We took our time gently and tenderly planting, mulching, weeding, and watering for several weeks on all of our trees! Here's where a few things went wrong...
- Austree Willows - We take full responsibility for these guys. We just straight up planted them too late. With how hot last summer was, I think it was just too hot for these little cuttings to endure the heat no matter how diligent we were with watering. That plus the fact that the soil around here is basically clay.
- Green Giant Arborvitae + Apple trees - These ones were definitely not our fault - These trees were ordered through The Arbor Day Foundation. While they were well priced and easy to order, we weren't too impressed with their communication as to when exactly they would be delivered. All that was said was "Sometime in May". So when late April rolled around we called and asked for a rough idea - May 18-23; great! Well after coming home late one evening after a very large, physically and mentally demanding tree job that took us 2 very long hard days to complete on May 9th, wanting nothing more than to take a long hot shower and immediately plop our little tired white butts in bed, we entered our barn only to find a tree delivery that looked like it had been sitting there baking for several days... I wanted to, cry, laugh, scream, and throw things around the room with whatever strength I had left after an exhausting 2 days... We opened the package only to see our poor little bare-root trees starting to brown but figured we'd take the risk, plant them, and see if they'd bounce back! So that night we stayed up till 11:00pm planting 49 Green Giants and 16 apple trees. (Ashley's regular bed time could be compared to that of an old retired lady. The sleepy's start hitting hard at around 8:00pm for this millennial. I was doomed.) Heavy eyes and tired hands working in headlamps to try and save our little baby trees. I think we were "sleep planting" the last hour. We were so tired we barely had the energy to crawl into bed let alone throw our selves in the shower to at least rinse off. It's disgusting, I know. We were pitiful. - Sadly, none of the apple trees survived and less than a handful of the Green Giants pulled through. Thank goodness we were able to get a full refund on everything but it's still a little discouraging and a lot of time and effort lost!
Time to Reflect
So here's what I took away for my silly sob story experience - If you are honest with yourself, what would you say you are letting control your life? What are you allowing your life to revolve around? Nathanael and I were so caught up in the idea of "doing" that we neglected to determine wether what we wanted done was even going to be worth doing at the time. We were so excited about having trees that the idea of them caused us to lose touch with the reality that they wouldn't even survive considering, in one case, the time of year, and the other, the fact that they were basically already dead to begin with. Caring for those trees, that we knew deep down had no real chance of survival, robbed us of so much time and effort. They caused us so much stress and made us feel defeated. But we allowed it to. Our emotions can cause us to do some crazy stuff. They can motivate us to do incredible things, overwhelm us with fear and not move, or cause us to think so ill of ourselves that we do things we never imagined. That's why learning to control those emotions can be so powerful!! There are so many things we let ourselves get caught up in that sneak their way into dictating what we do and see, where we spend our time and money, who we spend our time with, and inevitably, who we become. Can you honestly say you have the freedom to choose who you are becoming? Or is there something prohibiting you from that freedom? So again, if you are honest with yourself, what would you say is controlling your life? Finances, school, debt, family, friends, your job, even your idea of the “American dream”. Could you drop whatever it is you're doing today and leave everything tomorrow.. for a week, two weeks, a month? If you had the freedom to do that what would you do? Where would you go, what would you see? Who would you be? If there is something that is prohibiting you from that type of freedom, stop and ask yourself… is it worth it?
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