May 21st, 2026 "My Heart Swells With Pride..."

    I begrudgingly planted 10 Norway Spruce bare root seedlings that my wife received 'free' from The Arbor Day Foundation's yearly member dues. I had asked her not to get any more of them as I am done planting trees, at least in my mind, having personally planted many thousand since 1974, some by hand; a much greater portion using a tractor and tree planter.

   For you see, planting even a small number of trees like this requires hands-on physical labor that, although not yet beyond my capabilities, I am not eager to expend repetitively:

 1.) Determining spacious location and marking rows 

2.) Measuring distances between each seedling.

 3.) Flagging each location.

 4.) Digging holes, using a spade or a 1.5" auger powered by a cordless drill.

 5.) Cutting & pulling out hidden tree roots in the hole.

 6.) Enlarging hole as necessary.

 7.) Trim the seedling's roots as long as the top of the tree is above the ground or about 8-inches in length.

 8.) Placing seedling's roots deep in hole so they hang straight, not doubled back like a J.

 9.) Raising seedling to top of first root within the hole.

 10.) Firming soil tight around roots their whole length.

 11.) Using your heel or hand or end of shovel handle pack the soil around the tree, so that when you grasp the tree above ground you can't easily pull it out. 

12.) Water the tree thoroughly. 

13.) Repeat.

   Some trees live and some trees die for one reason or a dozen others; I may not/cannot water them enough. Maybe the weather doesn't cooperate; the trees flood out. Maybe somebody runs them over with a vehicle or mower by accident not knowing they are there. Or deer find them and snip their tops off as they eat their way through the woods, or step on them as they walk by. 

   I've seen does teaching their fawns, what is good to eat and what's not, as they walk down tree rows nibbling tree branches, and tops as human mothers would point out to their children (and maybe sample) as they walk through the produce section of a grocery store, if they can get away with it.

   Alas, I've written about planting trees a bunch of times -- I know y'all think it boring, but hey looking for a suitable image to accompany this drivel I happened across this play, sort of about a tree planter, among other characters sent to me from Joe McDonnell fourteen years ago on April 11, 2012. Maybe he has the reason written down in his diary ...

From: "Joseph McDonnell"
Subject: Please alert Steve to this [play about tree planting]
Date: April 11, 2012 6:08:43 PM CDT
To: "Steven G. Reynolds"

 

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov

SONIA. No, the work is thrilling. Dr. Astroff watches over the old woods and sets out new plantations every year, and he has already received a diploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he can tell you, you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are the ornaments of the earth, that they teach
mankind to understand beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in countries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The
inhabitants of such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive, graceful in speech and gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and science blossom among them, their treatment of women is full of exquisite nobility---

VOITSKI. [Laughing] Bravo! Bravo! All that is very pretty, but it is also unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go on burning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds of planks.

ASTROFF. You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone. Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.

 [To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make? Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. 

[To VOITSKI] I read irony in your eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and--and--after all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass
peasant-forests that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the rustling of the young plantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if I had had some small share in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I
plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride ...

Yah shure.