I tossed my car keys onto the kitchen counter and announced, “While I was in town today, I bought a new tree for us to plant in the yard.”

My husband Arnie was leaning against the sink eating a summer sausage and cheese sandwich. He asked, surprised, “Why would you do that? We have more than enough trees in and around our yard.”

My husband was right, there were a lot of trees around our house. To the west, we had seven trees along the road. To the north ran an entire row of pine trees. On the east side of the property stood a small forest of white pine trees which had been planted by Arnie and my brother in 1981. On the south side ran the Little Eau Pleine River. Its banks are lined with oak trees, box elder and sumac. Most of the trees around our house are pine, except for a flowering crabapple, a white birch, and a mountain ash which were planted close to the house a long time ago.

Standing next to Arnie, I looked out the kitchen window and explained, “Ever since you made a second driveway to our yard, the small field south of the house has been turned into a lawn. It looks empty. I want the new maple tree planted there, right in the center.”

The following afternoon, I watched Arnie dig a generous-sized hole for the maple tree roots to stretch out. Standing in the shade of the flowering crabapple tree, I shared the reason I’d bought this tree, “It’s called a sunset maple because its leaves are supposed to turn a beautiful, bright color in the fall.”

Hefting a large shovel of dirt out of the hole, Arnie grunted, “Raking its leaves will be your job, not mine.”

Arnie passed away a couple years later. Raking the maple tree leaves were certainly only be done by me.

I tend to think of trees as living forever, but they don’t. I love mountain ash trees because of their white blossoms in spring and bright orange berries in the fall. Unfortunately, the one in front of the house wasn’t well, and it eventually died. A cluster of new mountain ash trunks grew around the dead trunk. None of the new branches looked any healthier than the original tree. They were all riddled by woodpeckers looking for lunch.

Six years ago, I was saddened when one of the two pine trees near the northwest corner of my house died. That spring, all its needles turned red. I had it cut down, consoling myself that it was okay because the other pine tree near it was still living.

This past winter an ice storm broke several large branches off the remaining tree. I realized that after being severely cut back for years by the electric high-line maintenance crew, combined with the fresh damage, the tree couldn’t be saved. I had the broken pine tree cut down, along with the sick, multi-trunked mountain ash.

The front of my house appeared unnaturally bare, with all the trees gone. I knew I would miss watching birds retreat to tree branches between feeder visits when winter came. To remedy the situation, I bought two new trees to plant in front of the house.

I worried that I would need help to plant them. I imagined that I’d run into stones too big to lift, or roots that would require a chainsaw to get past.

On a recent weekend when my daughter Tammie was visiting, I suggested, “Let’s try planting the new trees.”

Tammie eagerly offered to help.

It surprised but pleased me that I managed to not only remove the sod from where the trees were to be planted but dug two large holes deep enough for the trees. During one of my frequent rests on a lawn chair to watch Tammie do some of the digging, I enthused, “Don’t you feel like a mother giving birth to a new generation? These are baby trees right now, but some day they will be big and strong. Whenever you see them, you’ll remember that you were the one to plant them.”