Planting the Future one Tree at a Time

We are building the future one tree at a time.

This past Saturday Phaedra Jean Taylor and I spent the day planting things out in our front “yard.”

Having built our house on land that was farmed for decades, we have no trees. We've no shelter from the sun, nowhere for birds to roost, nowhere to hang a tire swing.

So every birthday and Christmas and saints feast days we buy each other trees. Since it was the Feast of Saint Francis this past Friday, we bought ourselves a gorgeous Red Oak tree, along with Carolina Jessamine, Blackfoot Daisies, Purple Cone flowers, Purple Salvia, Mexican Sage Bush, a Candlestick tree and Yellow Esperanza, among others.

It hasn’t rained over the past two months, however, so the ground was obstinately hard and I had to use a pickaxe to dig a hole deep enough for the Red Oak to fit.

But there’s something deeply satisfying about doing the job ourselves. We could possibly pay somebody else to do it but we would be robbing ourselves of a chance to become more sensitized to the rhythms and demands and gifts of creation.

The going is slow and the work is spread out over months, which can feel discouraging at times, but we both derive such joy from working with our hands, and working together—in the words of the King James Bible—to “dress” and to “keep” this plot of land that God has entrusted to us.

While I’m working with my hands, I’m not solving intellectual problems, I’m not writing book chapters in my head, I’m not imagining future projects. I’m simply being present to the present, which is so good for my personality type.

I like to sweat. I like to feel my muscles ache. I like to dig out clumps of dirt with my hands. I like to take the lead from my gardener wife. I like the obdurate personality of the ground, which asks me always to respect it.

And I love imagining what it will look like in 25 years from now, when these trees will have reached their maturity in one form or another and when I will be in my late 70s.

I like the idea that I cannot magically rush it into fruition. It makes me feel more human, and for that I am deeply grateful.

PS: I say in the video that the oak is 6'10" but it's 10'!