My neighborhood has a lot of large empty lots. One of these lots used to be a retirment home run by the Freemasons called the Eastern Star. This place had special meaning to me as both my great grandmother and my great grandfather passed away in this retirment home. Sadly the place closed down. A few years ago the building was knocked down for a construction project that never went anywhere (the cause of many of the vacant lots).



Well, I figured that I'd plant something in said lot that might add a little more life. So late on night, I set out to both improve the space and as a memory to my great grandparents. I went into my backyard and found this wonderful little evergreen next to an overgrown garden bed.



My family has always been big into nature so transplanting a tree was nothing new to me. A simple trashbag works as well as any pot will and the key to getting a good root ball is shovel blade angle. It probably would have been better if I'd gotten him out in daylight but I wanted him out of the ground as little as possible.



I soon had Wilhelm Von Evergreen, as I had named the little guy, in my back seat ready to roll.



When I got to the designated spot I found a rude surprise. The ground covering of dirt was actually covering up gravel. Luckily I had brought along some rich dirt from home and made a nice home for Wilhelm.



This was by a moderatley busy street (at least for this time of night) and a security light that I was too far away from to activate myself kept getting turned on by pedestrians. Each time this happened I had to lay flat and wait for the light to turn off again. Despire this hassel I managed to get Wilhelm in the ground. I poured some water around him and wished him the best of luck, giving my traditional planting blessing "Grow strong, grow deep, grow rich, grow tall."



I slipped off into the night again leaving my little buddy to settle into his new home.

THE NEXT MORNING

I swung by the lot on my way to work. I meandered over to my little pal and he seemed to be enjoying the November sunshine. Hopefully he'll do well.