Planting A Promise

Yesterday we planted two oak saplings, and I am ridiculously delighted about it. These two come from a little tribe of hopefuls that started as a handful of acorns I collected from the ground in our canyon last year. I dropped them in water, discarding the ones that floated, then filled pots with native soil and placed a viable acorn on its side in each container, and covered it with two inches of soil. I chose pots that were tall and deep rather than wide to encourage the taproots to reach downward.

We watched and waited and watered, and before long we had five or six tiny fledgling trees. I followed the advice of my mother-in-law Nancy, a wise planter of trees from way back, and our friend and helper, Michael, who also knows a thing or two about getting things to grow, and left the babies in their pots through the dry summer months, despite my eagerness to put them in the ground. Two grew particularly tall and straight, and these are the ones we chose to plant nearby. I donated the others, and they will become a part of a grove in an area of the ranch near the main road to be enjoyed by all who pass for generations to come.

And it is exactly this—the future orientation of the endeavor—that makes me so happy. When I look at our saplings, I envision them as tall noble beings that will grace this canyon long after I am gone.

There is a well-known quote attributed to the writer Nelson Henderson: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

I cannot say it better than that.