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planting trees Over fifteen years ago my parents had their house built in what was an old farmer's field. What we called a lawn was a combination of wild grass and whatever the farmer had planted there years ago. It was scraggly and sparse with stones coming to the surface in spots. Nothing stood in the way of the winds that blew across the fields on a daily basis. They were determined to change the landscape by planting trees to replace the ones that had been cut down generations before by the farmers who settled there. It was a modest start with trees that fit into buckets planted in rows. Winter would thin the population and they would plant more the following year to replace the casualities. It was a slow process, but now the trees that I used to be able to step over are twenty feet tall. As I said not every tree that they planted survived, but the ones that did are starting to look impressive and I can't wait to see what they will look like in another fifteen years. A miniature forest will have replaced a field and I'll be partly responsible for the transformation. My only complaint is that they didn't take enough pictures as they were planting to chart the growth over time. When my parents were having the house built, I could have cared less. Going out to see the progress on the house held very little interest for me at the age of fourteen. All that I could see was piles of lumber next to piles of dirt and none of it impressed me. Now fifteen years later, I can appreciate what my parents must have felt when they saw their home being built. I can't imagine the freedom they saw in this house they were creating from the ground up. It wasn't their first house, but it was the first one that was built just for them. All of those feelings of achievement and pride were lost on me years ago. What it must have cost them at the time with four children to raise is probably far beyond what I make for a living. As much as I rail against the American dream, I also want to own my own house and hope that it will become a reality next year. I not only see it as a milestone in terms of responsibility, but a new level of freedom. Never again will I have to hand over some money to another person just to have a place to eat and sleep. Yes, I know that I wll be paying property taxes, but I can't wait to say that this belongs to me when I walk into a house. I am sure that some people buy their first house when they are in their twenties or maybe even earlier, but that didn't happen for me. My twenties were spent in college and that left very little money for the future. |