Four Cars and a Chainsaw

I have sold four cars in my life.  Each time I sold the car it was because my life had changed and I needed something different.

My first car was terrible.  Only one of the four doors opened from the outside (and it wasn’t the driver’s door).  It burned through a quart of oil every 80 miles so I always had an entire case of Penzoil in the trunk.  Within six months of owning it the alternator went out and the battery died and along with the battery my resolve to keep the car on life support died with it.  Besides, I was enrolling in college and I would be working three jobs and I needed a more reliable car to get me around – preferably one that friends wouldn’t have to slide through open windows in order to get into. 

My second car was a stick shift.  I bought it even though I didn’t know how to drive a stick because it was so much cooler than my last car.  After a couple herky-jerky hours of practice in a parking lot I thought I was ready to go.  Turns out, you don’t really know if you can drive a stick shift until you get stopped at a red light on a steep hill.  Also, as it turns out, that’s a terrible time to learn that you can’t drive a stick shift.  I kept that car all through college and after I mastered the clutch I fell in love with that car.  I took it on road trips, smoked cigars in it, discovered great music in it, had talks about Life and Love in it.  As far as cars go, it was definitely my first true love.  But then I got married and we had decided to move to my wife’s hometown in California and a car without air conditioning just wasn’t going to cut it.  So I traded that car in and almost made enough money on it to cover the cost of the new snow tires I wouldn’t need any more and the stereo I had loved so much. 

Big enough for two people.  Not quite big enough for two people, a dog, and a baby.

My third car was a pretty normal young adult car.  It was a nearly perfect compromise for that time in our life.  It was sporty looking but reliable, got respectable gas mileage but had a few unnecessary frills and it had A/C and a manual transmission (I did say I learned to love driving a stick shift).  That car served us well for several years and the air conditioning definitely helped me get used to the California heat.  But we sold that car when we found out that we were expecting a child.  You just can’t get a baby in and out of a car seat when you’re driving a low-to-the-ground 2-door.  So we bought an SUV for my wife and I got the truck I had always wanted.

Years later I’m now the one driving the SUV and my wife has a new-to-us car.  We sold the truck last weekend.  True to the pattern, life has changed again.  We have decided it is time to pack up 10-years’ worth of junk and move to a new neighborhood in a better school district because our daughter will (impossibly it seems) start school next fall.  And, frankly we never thought we’d stay in our current house as long as we have.  Now you might be wondering why on Earth I would sell a truck before moving.  I know I am.  I already miss having that thing.  The plain truth is that we didn’t need three vehicles but we did need some extra cash for down payments and real estate fees and all those other expenses that come with moving.  So I let go of the truck I drove for nearly a decade.

A small truck is a great thing for a gardener.

We are feeling cautiously optimistic.  We don’t know if our house will sell or when it might.  We don’t know if we’ll find the perfect house for the rest of our lives.  But we feel like we’re in a good position.  We don’t absolutely have to move.  We can take our time and make the right decisions for our family.  But tempering that optimism is a bit of melancholy.  This was, after all, our first house.  This is where our dog achieved his ultimate goal of becoming an inside dog.  This is where Santa has found our daughter every Christmas of her life.  This is the house we managed to furnish to our mutual liking in spite of my wife’s “denim furniture” phase.  This is the house where we figuratively and literally sank our roots.  I have cut down a bunch of burdensome trees and planted new ones that I was excited to see grow.  I have planted boxwood hedges that haven’t had a chance to fill in yet.  Just a few weeks ago I planted a hundred white tulips that might not bloom before we leave.  So, yeah, I’m a little sad to say goodbye before I’ve seen the culmination of all that effort.

One of several trees that fell under my reign here.

But if there’s one thing that selling cars and cutting down trees has taught me about life it’s that letting go of something old is the only way you can grab onto something new.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race - Or Prolongs the Finish

I like the story of the tortoise and the hare and how the message is that the slow-and-steady approach wins the race.  I admit that I like it because it helps me justify just how long it takes me to get certain things done though.  I'm not a true procrastinator.  I'm too impulsive for that title.  I'm just slow with certain things. 

It’s been a full four months since I had the mulberry tree in my front yard removed.  With the tree gone I had to swap out a bunch of shade plants for things that love the sun.  It took me a couple weeks to figure out which plants I would use and to get them ordered, purchased, and planted, but I did it and I’ve got that dialed in to my satisfaction now.  I also got right on fixing the broken sprinkler lines in the immediate wake of the stump grinding since some things shouldn't wait. 

But in the last four months, the one glaring thing I had not done was figure out how to address the unsightly mess left behind by the stump grinding.  As was promised, the arborists back-filled the hole with the shredded-up stump.  It looks like soil but it’s not.  The surrounding grass has not encroached upon the site at all.  I suspect it has something to do with the decomposing wood tying up all the nitrogen.  The absence of the tree and its surface roots also made it painfully obvious that my yard is not level by anyone's definition. 

The "footprint" of the mulberry tree.

Back in August, I justified not doing anything about this because I figured that re-grading and then re-sodding my lawn when it was a hundred degrees out was not a good idea.  I’d put it off until September.  But then when September came I had plans that involved a week in Boston and my wife had several trips for work planned.  And it was still really hot.  It just seemed like a bad time to tackle a big project.  October, with its cooler weather would be a better month for this.  Of course, I found reasons to delay in October too.  There was a birthday I had to plan for, a 3-day weekend in Lake Tahoe I was looking forward to, playoff baseball, and still pretty oppressive heat.  At one point I did make a couple half-hearted attempts at contacting a few landscape companies to come out and give me an estimate but I had bad luck with that.  One company never called me back and I decided the other one was going to be too expensive so I cancelled their appointment. 

One of the many "sink holes" in my lawn.

Now it’s mid-November and my yard still has this big gaping hole in the center of it and there are so many holes and bumps that it looks like the template for the old Atari game Moon Patrol. 

If it weren’t for my friend and neighbor, Brian, I would probably be stuck in my tortoise shell barely moving on this.  But Brian managed to find a landscaper that would return his calls and over the past two weeks I’ve been watching these guys tear down Brian’s backyard and rebuild it into exactly what Brian wanted.  On the night they wrapped things up I approached the owner of the company and asked him if he could give me an estimate on my yard. 

I would love to do it myself.  I believe I have the capability of doing it myself.  But I also know that for me to remove 1400 square feet of sod (and tree roots), regrade the entire yard, install a functional sprinkler system and then put sod down, it would take me more weekends than I care to give up.  After some conversation with my wife, we agreed that this is one of those times when it is worth it to pay someone else to do it. 

So nothing has happened yet except that I am on the landscaper’s calendar for the week after Thanksgiving.  And I can hardly wait.  I just wish I had gotten to this point sooner but I'm going to trust that old Aesop had it right and that in the end, I'll be happy that I took the slower approach.

Tiiiiimmmmbbbbeeerrrrr

Once upon a time I took a Lit test on a novel (Saint Maybe) of which I had read only the first 16 pages.  But I had gone to the 3-hour night class the week before and paid attention to the discussion so I felt reasonably certain that I would do well on the test.  And I did.  I received the highest grade in the class. 

Later that year I showed up to my 12:30 p.m. Modern Philosophy class after two weeks of having slept through classes and discovered that we were having a test that day.  I was so lost.  I received the lowest grade in the class.   The 35% I received was generous. 

Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with gardening.  But I bring it up because it speaks to the way I do things.  I am equal parts slacker and over-achiever.  I am just as likely to procrastinate as I am to get something done immediately.  It just depends on my mood.  

Naturally, I take that approach to life into the garden. 

I took this photo on the night before the tree was scheduled to walk the un-Green Mile.
It's not a good photo because of the harsh lighting, but it lets you see what a dominate feature the tree was.  

My mood lately has been all about getting things done.  A couple weeks ago it occurred to me that I had a couple problem trees and after writing about it and getting some valued feedback I decided to get them chopped down.  And, as of yesterday, those trees are now mulch destined for someone else’s yard. 

I can't see one of these in action without thinking of the movie "Fargo".

I was pretty proud of myself for taking action and getting things done so quickly. 

And then 5:00 rolled around – generally the hottest part of the day in Sacramento – and as I stood in the middle of my newly “full sun” lawn with a hose in hand, I found myself metaphorically kicking my own butt for acting so quickly.  I really should have waited until October to cut down the shade-giving mulberry tree.  Another couple months wouldn’t have made a big difference in my gardening plans anyway. 

As for the peach tree that was cut down I don’t have that same regret.  No, it’s an entirely different regret.  The arborist I hired told me he thought the reason it stopped producing peaches was because I let the tree get too tall and overgrown.  It had grown beyond its fruit-bearing size and could have benefitted from new wood every year.  Oops.

I wish I had kept this section of the peach tree but they took it before I got to it.

What’s done is done though, right?  It’s easy to look back on life and second guess the choices we made, to cling to regrets, to redden with shame for the things we did or didn’t do.  But once we’ve learned our lessons from those things, there’s really no use in holding onto them.  I have learned the value of reading every word of a book, I have come to see the truth in the saying “90% of life is just showing up”, and now I know the importance of planting the right tree in the right place and that sometimes it is okay to procrastinate when doing so gives you a little more time to enjoy the shade.

Sawdust and hydrangeas or what was and what still is.