Tree planting day!

TJ has been working to prepare the garden space by mowing it several times, and that is done. We have covered the garden space for next year, about 1500 sq feet with plastic, tarps, and cardboard.
I have found and bought enough pallets to build the first two composting bins and best of all, or most fun for me anyway, I bought two apple trees and 6 blueberry bushes yesterday. It rained lat night for quite a while, soaking much of what used to be stored in the truck, but that is very good for tree planting day. I'll pick up my purchases with the F250 today and get them in the ground this morning.
All is going well, but I'm spending more than I had allocated. I suspect many of us who are thinking there is a timeliness to our preparations are constantly being faced with the decisions, both large and small, as I did yesterday. Everything changes when you begin to think time is short.

My example: I could have waited until next year and bought 2 year old bare root fruit trees for less than a third of the $29.99 I paid for each of the apple trees. I am working under a very strick budget and what is time to an apple tree? I could have waited. Except that I don't think loosing two years of apple tree growth is a good idea. I think time for easy purchase and easy transportation and low prices (yes, low even at 30/tree, for what will it be when everyone you know is putting fruit and nut trees in their back yards?) is at the end.

Some people who have been following the "Perfect Storm" of peak oil, global warming, fiscal growth and collapse, sterile seas, are calling this the "Last Summer." So all my spending is directed towards what will feed me and my tribe during the coming times. Also, I'm preparing both truck, trailer, and Geo Metro for even greater self sufficiency and mobility.

Most of all, as I go through my own transition back to work and non mobility, I am finding peace in the small things I can do, growing sprouts, planting these apple trees this morning. They will outlast me, and feed some or many. They will wait and grow and be part of a very different world. A more sane world I hope, a community that makes so much more sense to it's members than the community I live in now-the community of consumption.

So it is early morning, I will eat, drink coffee this morning and then later plunge my hands into moist compost, and set the future for two trees and six blueberry bushes. A real change in my little world. An act of prayer and joy in the face of the storm that comes. I do have pictures of the work and will take pictures of the trees and berries as they nestle into their new homes. Check the main site later today or tomorrow morning.