A Ten Dollar Hole

I went to a gardening class last month where I was told that "it is better to plant a $1 tree in a $10 hole, than to plant a $10 tree in a $1 hole." I take things like that to heart, so today I dug a $10 hole for my Red Haven Peach Tree. It took me about an hour and was a lot of good, honest, sweaty work. I had previously marked all the sprinkler heads with colorful plastic cups from my kitchen so that I could see the grid pattern and not slice open our water lines. I'm pleased to report that no pvc pipe was damaged in the digging of this hole. I also called Blue Stakes to come out and mark our underground power lines so that I didn't inadvertently pull a Ben Franklin. It was a successful dig. I was grateful to find mostly soil in my hole with a few dozen worms, a chunk of wood, and one huge rock thrown into the mix. I wanted to use Grant as a scale measurement for the rock, but he wasn't being very cooperative...hold still darn it!

Finally I was ready to plant a tree. I've never done that before, but I pretend like I know how to do a lot of stuff and this was no exception. It took some finangling to get the tree out of the pot, but extricate it I did and plopped it into it's new home full of fluffy dirt that smelled so good. (Yes kids, dirt does smell good. Go check, I'll wait. Just don't smell any in a cow pasture.) I patted dirt around the tree, making sure it was tucked in tight, then stepped back and saw that the tree was crooked. Ugh! Out came the small shovel, up came the tree, and after digging and repositioning, I finally had it right. So now we have a tree on our property...yeah! We can eat peaches in three years (but I can't decide if that will or won't help my patience problem). I've been thinking about it, and admittedly math isn't my strong suit, but since I paid $25 for my peach tree, wouldn't that make my hole in the ground a $250 one? I think so. It looks good there with one of my million dollar babies next to it.


Oh yeah, and this is what Grace did after I snapped her picture by the tree...