The White Pines

Yesterday we planted ten white pines in the back pasture.

I got the bare root trees from the Arbor Day Society.  No more than ten inches tall, they came with their roots wrapped around each other, in a long white plastic bag in the mail.

I had to keep them in the basement for a few days because I wasn’t ready to plant them.  On Saturday morning I soaked their roots in water for a few hours before putting them in the ground.

I got white pines because they grow quickly and once they’re big, they’ll bring back the view of the back pasture that we had when we moved here.  Since then our neighbors have parked their camper and built a nice red shed which is visible from the barnyard.

Our neighbors are good neighbors, I just prefer the grass and trees that we used to see instead.

I know the trees I planted will take years to grow and it will be some time before they actually make a difference in our view.  But I also know that the trees I’ve planted in the past seem to grow more quickly than I expect.

Because the trees are in the pasture, I had to protect them from the sheep and donkeys.  So while I was digging holes, Jon went to the hardware store and brought back ten tomato cages and a bag of mulch.

I wrapped the tomato cages with turkey wire, turned them upside down (because I never would have been able to poke the long wires that stick out from the bottom into the hard rocky ground), and held the tomato cages down with garden stakes.

It conveniently rained after I planted the trees, but for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be hauling water from the stream in buckets to water them.

When I checked on them today, the wire cages were all in place and the ground around them was moist.  Some of the little trees seemed to be hanging their heads and others had their arms reaching up to the sky.

Jon said a little blessing for the trees after we planted them yesterday. I imagine between watering them and all that good energy many of them will have a good chance of surviving.