So Tie Me To A Post And Unblock My Ears

It's wonderful that you can buy trees at 1am, meet Tree, the new royal apricot tree to replace the sad and unhealthy looking tree in my front yard:


Tree came home three nights ago and has been stalking the back porch, sitting right outside the door, peering ominously in at everyone passing through the kitchen through the blinds in the night. This is more people than you might expect over the past few days. Shepard and Cymeron have been staying in the guest room till they get their apartment together, and I guess Caius technically counts as a person. Technically. Sadly everyone was a little too bothered by Tree peering in lustfully at them to take any pictures, the dual voyeurism was just too uncanny, so there is no photographic evidence of this. But, believe me. Tree was there.

After several days of stalking the porch the day came when I was home and my dad hadn't left for work yet, and so I was able to swing by and borrow his shovel, hedge clippers, and hack saw.

Not sure there are any pics of the live oak that previously resided in my front yard, but I can inform you that it was more than twice as tall as it remains, and all that extra top was absolutely dead. The first part of my job involved sawing off the top and clipping it to bits till it fit in the trash bin. Then, digging it up out of the ground, which proved much easier than previously expected, it popped right out with some solid muscle work after loosening the dirt around the edges.

Here Tree stands next to his new hole, where he will no longer be able to spy on people who are thirsty in the night, and his predecessor on the left:


And after careful mixing of dirt and top soil and getting just the right height and building up a mound, and lastly covering it with mulch all the way out to the rim of the hole, Tree(that is Tree's proper name, BTW, so everyone is aware who I am referring to when I say that I am watering Tree, or that I have just been out to have a brief conversation with Tree) sits in its new home:


Tree is a self fertilizing apricot tree, and so you will find that the gender neutral "it" is the proper pronoun to reference Tree's freakish asexual nature.I have promised to be nice to Tree, regardless of its freakish and unnatural sexual tendencies in exchange for delicious fresh fruit.



Oh, and fresh home grown strawberries:


And the carpet of flowers covering my backyard:


The iced tea is less photogenic, plus, I didn't want to stop drinking it to take the picture.

"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration" - Ansel Adams.

Because adventure. Life is an adventure.