It was nice to have a couple of family days this week. I don’t work Mondays, so I took Tuesday as my holiday. I was still busy, but busy doing things with my wife and kids.
On Monday morning, my wife saw that Tractor Supply Company had fruit trees on sale. She’s been talking about getting an apple tree for the backyard since we got married. So we made a trip up to buy one.
Here’s the issue: you cannot just plant one apple tree. You have to plant two trees, so they can cross pollinate each other. If we were going to get two trees, how about an apple tree and a pear tree? Nope. They won’t do the pollination thing. So two apple trees came home with us.
We had to take two cars, because the trees were actually really tall. So I put the seats down in my Chevy Trax and fed the trees (pot first) through the open passenger window. I must have looked pretty ridiculous with two tree halves flapping in the wind as I drove them home.
There was a spot in the backyard where an old play scape was. It had a patch of ground that had no grass, so we put on there. That was an easy hole to dig and I had no issues. The second tree had to be like 25-50ft from the first one. Well, that hole was a bit harder to dig.
The ground was a bit tougher there. I actually had to break through a few tree roots. I’m not even sure what tree they were from as the closest tree is in my neighbor’s back yard. I also had to make sure not to dig too far, because the tree won’t do well if there is clay.
Once the trees were planted, I grabbed myself a non-alcoholic brew and relaxed in a chair on the driveway next to my wife. She had put up a splash pad / slip and slide for the kids to play in. They were having quite a blast.
Kids will be kids, so it shouldn’t surprise you that they came over and started to splash Sam and me. I had been scrolling my phone, so I freaked out at first. Thankfully, it didn’t get wet, but I did.
I put the phone down and walked over to where they were and grabbed a bucket, which I filled and started tossing at them. Before I knew it, the whole family was having a water fight. The kids were really trying to get me. At one point I had a full bucket of water and I emptied it toward my daughter (who moved out of the way), and instead soaked my wife! We all had a great time. I wish I had gotten pictures, but my phone was put away.
We all were drenched, and had no towels outside. So we walked through the house dripping water all over the place. After drying off and changing into dry clothes, we cooked some hot dogs on the grill for lunch and ate outside.
The day wrapped up with a steak dinner on the grill and some very fun memories! I hope you and yours had a great holiday weekend, too.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 