New Zealand

I've sat in front of this computer for about 15 minutes, just staring at the Blogger screen and trying to figure out how to sum up my trip. And the only conclusion I've come to is that it won't fit.

It wouldn't fit in our cameras (though we have 3000 photos as evidence that we tried) and it won't fit in my blog. New Zealand is, in comparison with the size of the world, such a small place, but it won't fit in here. The extraordinary creativity of God is bursting from the seams of the place, His glory revealed in lakes vast and mountains ancient, in the carving of a landscape by water, wind, glacier, volcano, earthquake, time. We were rendered spectacularly speechless around every turn.

So rather than try to come up with an eloquent and succinct summary that would end up being overwrought and insufficient, I'll just share some stories, and of course, some pictures! Let's start with this one.

This is a kauri tree. A teenager kauri tree, in terms relative to some that still exist in parts of the North Island. Some of the largest-growing and oldest-living trees in the world, the kauri were almost completely cleared from logging and fires in the 19th century. About 4% of the forests were spared and are now fiercely protected. In the far north, where we didn't have time to go, there is one giant specimen believed to be over 2100 years old: a tree from before the time of Christ. There are records of others, bigger and older, that existed before the massive deforestation, including one that explorers estimated at nearing 4000 years old. There are a few groves left in the Coromandel Peninsula, which we drove through, and thankfully this one and its twin behind it there were right by the road.

Also thankfully for all you fine readers, we'd been kayaking and Ben was still shirtless. Hands off, ladies. Hands off.

Lots more pics and stories to come!

A Tree Story: It's Planting Time

Last week after a loooong wait our trees finally arrived! We had our friends Jon and Heather come over to help with the process of getting the trees unwrapped and into the holes, then filling the holes and finishing the planting. It was an arduous process!

First step was getting the trees out of their packaging. Our big willow oak was container grown, meaning it needed some special attention. We dubbed Heather the "Root Liberator." It was her job to gently coax the roots, which had been growing around each other as they got to the edge of the container, out and to separate them so they could spread into the ground.

Ben helped:


I helped:


Scruffy supervised:

Time out for one more cute puppy picture:

Meanwhile Jon got to work on the cherry tree. The cherry tree had been "balled and burlapped" which means it was growing in the ground for a short time and then cut out and packaged up until we bought it. It was much easier to maneuver than the oak tree!


After the oak was successfully liberated, Jon and Ben manhandled it into it's waiting hole. It was very heavy.


Then we staked it so it would stay straight while we buried the roots and would grow nice and tall for its first year in the ground!

Cherry tree got the same treatment.

There she is! So happy in her new home!


It was a long and mildly difficult and expensive process, but so worth it! I can't wait to see these trees grow and branch out for as long as we live in our house, and to know that they'll be there for decades to come for the whole neighborhood to enjoy. If you have a yard and the space to do it, I would challenge YOU to plant a tree - what better time than Earth Day, which is coming up next Wednesday!

A Tree Story: Let's Dig Some Holes, Yo

So yesterday you heard about how we bought some trees to plant in our backyard. Today I'm telling the next chapter in this story: the exciting and physically daunting task of digging the holes for said trees.

The tree hole is the most important part of tree planting, according to people who know things about trees and planting them. It has to be the right depth, because the root system of a tree flourishes best in the oxygen-rich soil in the first couple feet of the ground. It has to be the right width, because the transplanted tree will need to stretch its first roots through well-tilled earth. It has to be the right shape, because the tree can drown if it sits in too much water that doesn't drain through a poorly-constructed hole. Hellooooooo, high maintenance.

We started with the hole for the willow oak since it would need to be bigger - about 4 feet in diameter and close to 2 feet deep at its edges.

First, we marked off our circle with some old spray paint we had in the garage. There is probably some much more eco-friendly way to mark it out, so if you plant a tree you should do that and not what I just said. In fact, scratch that. Umm, we used a non-synthetic organic soy-based paint that actually naturally fertilizes the soil and washes away in the rain. We bought it at a free trade store. Yeah, that sounds better.

Then, we started digging. Gotta get off the top layer of sod w/ all the grass and set that aside, because you don't want to put that back in the hole later.

You can see from these pictures the sad, sad state of our backyard. All that green behind us? That belongs to our neighbor. But the dead grass with patches of weeds? That's all ours. But that's why we're doing this! To bring beauty and life to our yard! So on with the digging.


This is the part where I was still helping. I couldn't do much digging with the big shovel so it was my job to use some other assorted tools to help. We were supposed to keep the edges pretty straight so I used an edger and a weird long shovel to do that. I also used a rake-thingie to loosen up the dirt for Ben's digging. Evidence that I helped as shown with these dirty tools:


When the hole was too deep for me to be much more helpful, I let Ben keep digging but sat outside and read Harry Potter aloud to him for entertainment. He was a total machine and made amazing progress.

What a good husband I have! His finished work was so fabulous. The perfect specimen of a well-dug hole. The hole by which all other tree holes should be judged. It will be a loving and happy home for our oak tree, I'm quite sure. The next night he nearly finished the hole for the cherry tree, too. He set up his video light rig outside so he could work after dusk. Cue dramatically lit digging shot:

The trees will hopefully be delivered today, so tomorrow I hope to have some pictures of them and the process of getting them into the ground. The adventure continues, next time, on A TREE STORY.

A Tree Story: Introduction

This weekend I got it in my head that we were going to buy and plant a tree. So I'm trying to document the process and share it with you fine folks. This will be an introduction to our story.

I've wanted to do something different in our backyard for a long time now. It is basically a scorched-earth wasteland that gets baked into oblivion during the summer. I have hopes that a couple trees could be the answer, providing shade to the rest of the yard and maybe even allowing a little grass to grow. Plus, planting trees is a nice thing to do for the earth and hopefully (providing I don't kill them in this process) they will be enjoyed by many families who live in our neighborhood for generations to come.

I made it clear at the nursery that I was not to be trusted with plants and needed idiot-proof trees and directions on what to do with them. The owner of the nursery helped us himself, picking out two trees and giving us the details on how to get them in the ground. We ended up with a cherry tree and an oak tree. Someday, theoretically, they will look like this:

Yoshino Cherry Tree

Willow Oak Tree

I tried to buy the biggest trees I could get. Newsflash: Big trees aren't cheap! Second newsflash: big trees require digging... a really big hole.

Apparently planting a tree is all about getting the hole right in the first place. The hole is recommended to be at least twice the width of the container and as deep. For the oak tree, this meant we were digging a four foot wide and nearly two foot deep hole. And be "we" I mean mostly Ben. My back injury - instigated, as a matter of fact, by my last attempt at landscaping - prevented me from being very helpful.

One man... many shovels... WILL Ben succeed in his task? WHAT will happen to our trees? Cliffhanger! Stay tuned for more on our tree-venture, next time with pictures!