The Nursery is Ready...

The tree nursery that is!!!  We had the opportunity to order trees through the shelter belt program, and since it was the last year to do this we really took advantage of it!  In total we ordered 450 trees and it took us all of the May long weekend to plant them!  It was actually the first long weekend Jared has devoted entirely to doing personal work for just us...well maybe not an entire weekend!  He did take some time to feed the cows!  I guess they do take priority!!

It was a lot of work to get ready for the trees, weeks in fact!  After a long day working at John Deere, Jared would come home and do his daily cow chores then he would spend the rest of the daylight hours and even some hours in the dark, cleaning away the junk pile in our back yard.  It was soooo much work, and even though the junk pile has to stay behind our house at least we will have trees to block it and next year we are going to put a nice fence in to block it from curious boys who like to climb and explore!  Anyway, we had dug up some established poplars from Buck and Arren's that John had started a couple of years ago.  We were able to put them all behind our house as a wind barrier from the wicked west winds we seem to have more often than not!  The only problem with those established poplars is we HAD to plant them that night after digging them up!  We finished at 11:30pm!  Emry was so helpful that night since we totally neglected our kids!  She took them in the house, gave the boys a bath, got them a snack and put on a show!  Armin fell asleep on the couch and when Emry thought it was getting pretty late her and Calum wandered out to see what we were doing!  They came out just as we were finishing up and together the four of us stood and watched the Northern Lights!  I hadn't seen them for so long and the kids really thought they were spectacular!  It was a special moment!

Before trees were planted!

The next morning we were up bright and early to get a good start on the rest of the planting!  We put a row of Red Osier Dogwoods behind the poplars to the west of our house.  A row of poplars and dogwoods to the south of our house behind the barbed wire fence in the bale yard.  We put willows inside the fence line to the south of our house, up to the septic field and then a row behind our house and a row to the north, with a row of dogwoods behind!  Jared also ploughed a garden behind our house, not a huge one, but one that will generously suit our needs, with dogwoods surrounding three sides of it!  I am envisioning a nicely enclosed garden with a cute little gate and picket fence at the front.

Armin loved helping daddy!

It seemed like everyone was in on the planting fun at some point during the weekend

The after!!

The future sandbox area!

With the trees we had left over we planted in the old garden plot behind Myrna's house and when we are totally ready we will dig them up and plant them.  We want to put a row of poplars along the road to the east of our house, there were some there years and years ago but they all died out from the drought in the 80's.

It was a loooongg, long weekend, but it was lots of fun and so rewarding, and in the years to come we will most certainly enjoy the results of our labours!  I only wish it would stop raining for a couple of days so we can seed grass in our yard and actually plant our garden, today was going to be the day but alas we cannot, it is much too wet!  I am looking forward to the changes our yard will take each year and the many memories we will make!