Arbor Day: The Boy and Girl Holly Trees

Happy Arbor Day!

Fun Fact #1: We have 2 holly trees in our front yard.

Fun Fact #2: I had no idea holly grew into trees, thought it was just a bush or a Christmas décor item. (Below is not the trees now... now the berries are green...)

Fun Fact #3: They have leaves all year and according to our good little friend Boston, they are the best climbing trees for little people.

See how the branches are like little steps all the way up? and it goes really far up...
 

Fun Fact #4: One of our trees is a boy. The other is a girl. The boy makes pollen, lots and lots of pollen. The girl makes holly berries. The girl is on the left, and her new berries are still green so it's hard to see them. I think the girl looks so much heavier than the boy, like she's stressed out, weighed down or something. I looked in older pictures of the house, and it appears she's been like that for a while. Hmm..

Fun Fact #5: It's fun calling the trees 'he' and 'she' now. It's like trees are our friends.

Maybe they are... Happy Arbor Day.

Earth Day Apples

Just in case you missed Earth Day.

We didn't.  Because, well… really, I have been slowly accepting the loss of our apple tree. It looks really scary and it has these hole in it.

See aren't they scary? Okay maybe you need to look closer...

Yep, creepy... We found out that they are more than likely from wood peckers or bees, but they still freak me out. Like I try to look at them because I'm so intrigued and then I run away yelling to Kyle that I think I'm going to have nightmares…

But I was still holding onto all hope that the tree would survive.  It made apples last summer, but they were all gone by the time we moved in. It probably has not been pruned in ten years, and probably wasn't watered for at least 2 summers.  But I appreciate that it tried to make apples last summer, and I wanted to give it another chance.

Then our 92-year-old neighbor told us the tree was dead. And somehow I believed him, even though Kyle had been telling me all along. I'm still trying to deny it, but if you look at the tree compared to the rest of the green yard, it's pretty obvious.

So then it was Earth Day, but mostly it was the day before my birthday and my husband bought me…

An APPLE TREE!

So we planted it and I'm sure all our neighbors though we were so "green." Really we just love apples, and plants that grow food.

Isn't it so lovely next to our holly trees?

So Happy Late Earth Day… or Happy Early Arbor Day (it's coming up on Friday so there's still time).

Happy Planting.

Twenty-five

Who knew I'd be twenty five already.

I didn't. Or at least last weekend I didn't when my uncle asked me how old I would be turning and I told him 26. My brother, who is exactly 1 year, two weeks, and 1 day older than me said, "no you're not."

I did the math and realized I'll only be twenty-five.

Having to do the math probably means that I'm getting older, that the years are passing by more quickly, and that I may need to use more of my "fine lines and wrinkles" St. Ive's face wash... although I still need the "acne AKA teenager" St. Ive's face wash too. I'm not sure how that works.

But let's be honest, I know many of you, like my co-workers told me, are laughing thinking about when you turned twenty-five.  Because when you look back now, twenty-five seems like a very long time ago.

The clinic where I work has about forty employees. I am the youngest, and I have been told that I am actually younger than most people's children. I have been corrected when I did not understand 'the way things are in the real world,' and I have been puzzled many times when we talk about 'where Jimmy Hoffa is buried'.

This weekend I embraced by youth by running a 5K through mud and fire and water and over nets and under barbed wire.  But let's be honest, I felt a little older when I had to stop and catch by breath, or when the 65-year-old man passed me.

I embraced by age when I woke up Monday morning and realized I was sore. Everywhere.

I'm twenty-five and one grammatical edit away from my Masters. I presented my research this weekend at a conference and I'll be attending research day today at the VA. This morning, I'll get my teeth cleaned, and next weekend I'm planning to buy pantry organizers at Ikea. It all sounds very grown up, doesn't it.

But I still love to run around outside and discover the world, and pull over on the side of the road to take pictures of the wild flowers. I love music and I love to sing out loud in my car, in my shower, and in the Wal-Mart.  I don't mind riding the shopping carts like they are skateboards or cheering louder than ever for my husband at his softball games.

I like twenty-five. I think it says I'm old enough to know what I love, but still young enough o add new things to the list. Quoting the wonderful author Shauna Neiquist from the 'Twenty-Five' chapter of  Bittersweet, "You are young enough to believe that anything is possible, and you are old enough to make that belief a reality."

I think I'm a pretty good twenty-five. I'm becoming, something, someone. Not yet thirty, not quite 20...but just twenty-five.

Happy Birthday.