Happy Memorial Day

Hey everybody,

It’s beautiful here in Stillwater, MN, sitting on my mother’s deck working on not looking like a ghost. I’m in the Cities for another day, having come up for a funeral, and sticking around to see my family.

Today was dedicated to planting trees. At my house in Madison I have huge maple trees, and I have maple seedlings as weeds. They grow everywhere, given the thousands of helicopters that issue forth every May. My mother has five acres of land, some of which is devoid of trees. So it’s a perfect match, I weed and save them, then replant them in her yard. This time I had, oh, 40 of them or so. The trick to planting trees is to imagine what they’re going to look like in 20 years. You don’t want to plant them in rows, you don’t want to get them too close to each other, and you want to be mindful of the bushes and other plants growing up. You also want to leave open space so all the woodland creatures can flourish.

Transplanting is stressful on trees, so we hedged a little and put a handful of helicopters in the hole with each tree. With the GF driving the lawn tractor and me manning the shovel we machined through the task. Find a good spot, mow a hole in the weeds, dig a hole, insert tree, add some dirt, add helicopters, fill the hole with water, fill the water with dirt, play in mud, wash, rinse, repeat.

Now it’s time to go offline for a while, so have a great Memorial Day weekend! Enjoy it and remember to thank your veterans for their service.

…Bob