A lot of things happened this Spring Break, so much that I
have trouble remembering all the fun I had. From repairing damaged bicycles to
writing English essays, my two weeks off were filled to the brim with
excitement. Of all the highlights, however, one truly stands out above the
rest; on the second week of the break, my brother and I got to move a tree. It
started as lovely as one could imagine, with digging a four foot deep hole to
put the tree in. What a blast it was having to dig through hard packed clay
with semi-functioning shovels for eight hours. We ended up finishing the hole
after pulling out a pick axe to break the rock hard ground, but the fun was
only beginning. The next day, we got the privilege of digging up a six foot
tall tree from the ground. No matter how much fun shoveling hundreds of pounds
of dirt out of a hole is, doing the same thing while avoiding roots always
takes the cake. Best part was, the tree’s roots extended underneath a deck, meaning
we got to uninstall and reinstall half of an ancient deck. So much fun! Another
ten hours later and the tree was out, but we couldn’t call an end to the party
just yet; no, instead the ever helpful supervisor who owned the tree decided we
needed a different kind of soil for this tree. A fair line of thinking; after
all, the tree only survived in this type of soil for a decade and it couldn’t
possibly survive without a new type of dirt surrounding it. So the fun
continued as we hauled half a dozen bags of soil to the location and dumped
them in the hole alongside the tree. After all that fun, we finally got to see
the finished product weeks later. A beautiful pine tree standing as tall as
ever in a new beautiful location. A shame it died though.
