I have three new members of my Barn team! They live in the back of the property. The deal between us is that I provide food and water (no shelter) and they provide music to my ears on a windy day, shade during the low lying sun in the afternoon and a place to hang holiday lights and gather for beautiful photo opportunities.
The Barn has three new trees and they are spectacular!
I have always loved trees. It is hard to describe the strong emotional reaction I had watching these trees placed on my property. My Mother loved trees and I am sure I got this from her.
As with a lot of decisions in my life, this was spontaneous. The reason for the trees is simple: I wanted to put something on the property that would enhance the overall shopping experience at The Barn. I knew that, at the very least, they would be an immense attention getter. Unfortunately, Castle Rock seems to have very few full grown trees in the downtown area….these trees draw your eye and beckon a closer look.
Once I had made up my mind to do this, I visited to the Town of Castle Rock to see if I needed any special permits (See? I learned my lesson from years ago!). A smiling woman met me at the Building Department counter and I asked her if I needed any special permits to plant some trees on my commercial property. She eyed me closely and asked if what I meant was a permit to remove some trees. I patiently corrected her and told her that I was planting trees…several full grown trees. She looked confused. I quickly gathered from her reaction that more trees are felled in Castle Rock than are planted. I assured her that I was planning on bringing in some healthy full grown 18 foot trees and planting them on the property where The Barn was located. She smiled again and asked if the trees would hamper driving visibility on Perry Street or interfere with walking on any sidewalk. No, I said. She then grinned and told me to “knock myself out!”
Next, find the trees. Through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, I finally found a great guy to help me with this project. My new tree-guy friend came to the Barn to get a visual on what I wanted to do. I got LOTS of smiles and support for my plan and he invited me to visit a tree farm in Elbert County that had just the type of trees I was looking for. We left immediately and drove and drove and drove and drove and my cell phone eventually lost signal….I was completely cut off from civilization…not something I am used to. Fortunately, it was well worth the drive. Way out in the middle of no-man’s land was an old grove of trees…spectacular trees…and I wanted ALL of them!
Well, to make a short story short, I finally settled on three gorgeous trees.
The night before the trees were to arrive, I woke up in a sweat around 1:00 AM….I realized that I had forgotten to check a survey of the property to make sure I wasn’t encroaching on my neighbor’s turf. I spent the next hour looking through my files for a recent survey. I finally found one and it worried me. I got up around 5:00 AM, drove down to the Barn and, in the dark with a flashlight, I crawled on the sidewalk in search of an elusive “X” that supposedly had been marked in the concrete when the sidewalk was originally poured. This “X” would be marking my property line. Eureka! Not only was the “X” there, but I had also under estimated the amount of property I could use to put in these trees! I went home and slept like a baby for another few hours.
Around noon I met my tree-guy friend for some last minute tree positioning strategy. It was during this conversation that I found out that this was his first job transplanting trees in over 2 years (he had suffered a medical issue that required his long term recovery). OMG! These were huge trees! I kept my worries to myself and quickly left town for the night (again, I am such a wimp).
Still trying to keep a short story short.…I came back to Castle Rock the next day to see a lovely tree positioned safely on my property. The remaining two trees came shortly thereafter. The trees were precisely placed as planned. The trees will get their new ‘drip system’ in the next few days to keep them alive over the upcoming crucial year.
Yesterday afternoon a small breeze came up and the trees started making their magical music. So beautiful.
My crazy landlord would be very pleased.
Yours, Catherine
