When we moved in here we thought that we would be here about two years. Definitely no more than five. Well, SEVEN years later we are still here and have no plans to move. That's not to say we wouldn't love to move somewhere else. It's just that we have to stay where Ray's job is and our house isn't worth what we paid for it. So it really doesn't make sense for us to move. The problem with thinking that you are only going to be in a house temporarily is that it makes it very hard to really invest in that house. There are so many projects that I would have done six or seven years ago if I had known we would be here this long. I look into my tiny backyard with no shade and no privacy and think, "If only I had planted a few trees when we first moved in..." Well, I don't want to be here in five years thinking, "If only I had planted something even five years ago." So this past weekend we planted a privacy hedge and two trees. This is what our privacy hedge should look like in five years:
This is what it looks like now:
If we are still here in five years, I'll be so thankful that we didn't put off committing to this house any longer. If we move before I see this row of sticks turn into a real hedge, then we still had fun putting it in and imagining what our yard could look like. Either way we win.
As I said, we also planted a couple of trees. A mulberry tree that actually looks like a little tree already.
And a Royal Empress tree that is actually just a tiny stub of a stick protruding from the ground, barely distinguishable from the mulch. I have high hopes for this tree as it is reported to grow up to 18 feet per year. We shall see....
