One of the only downsides of our new property is its visibility from the road. Granted, this road we’re talking about isn’t Hendersonville Hwy; there is, in fact, not that much traffic going past, but when you move “out to the country” you sort of have this vision of total privacy and isolation, right?  This desire, married with my insistence to not be TOO FAR OUT, created a troublesome dichotomy and visibility from the road was the sacrifice we had to make.

So, before we started obsessing over fill dirt, before we started working on the old farmhouse, before we even bought the property practically, I wanted to truck in barrier trees for future privacy.  You’d think we were starting a nudist colony, but this was important to me, ok!  Here’s the thing….we’d need a lot of barrier trees. Factoring that into the budget meant, a lot of Lilliputian barrier trees.  They grow fast, right?

When I was on my Craigslist hunt, I ran across Grahams Tree Nursery in Salisbury, and it sounded too good to be true.  Salisbury is about 2 hours away, but this guy charges the same for delivery and planting etc. if you’re down the street or up a mountain.  Once Ed did the math, we realized we needed 35 trees and planting 35 trees was just not in my bailiwick.

Enter the giant:

Wayne has a huge list of ornamental, shade, screening, and fruit trees as well as all sorts of shrubs.  If you want the trees but don’t want to sweat, call him and he can help you out.  What took him and a helper about 2 hours to do would have taken us 2 weeks and that’s 2 weeks of valuable growth lost!  (I get really caught up in the hysteria.)

So now we had 35 trees to water, no well or hose in sight and we were in the middle of a drought. Ugh….this building in the country requires wayyyyyy too much thought given to infrastructure.  Isn’t that stuff just usually THERE?!?!

So a few months later, thanks to 350 feet of hose, 200 feet of extension cord, two buckets and one clever little electric pump stationed down in our creek, we have managed to keep all 35 alive, drought or no drought.  Because he’s a gentleman, Ed lets me use the hose and he hauls buckets of water back and forth where the hose won’t reach.

Here’s Ed in one of his rare “I’m not happy with you” moments (I mean, how many of those could you really have while married to me?  That is a rhetorical question.)

I was insisting on watering the trees during a deluge.  Wayne told me that even with a lot of rain, the root ball could stay dry ok?!?  Believe me, Ed’s expression notwithstanding, It was a prudent decision!

And then we were rewarded with this:

Totally worth it.