About a Pine

Small damaged things...

So as I think I've written before, once our move to Oregon was a definite thing, I dug up the Scotch Pine I'd bought as a seedling from a friend's son (part of a Boy Scout Christmas fundraiser) a few years ago. 

Back when I received it, I tended to the pine in its tiny plastic pot until it was ready to go into the ground, and then I planted it in our backyard in Paso Robles. But after a year of typical brutal sun and wind, one side of the tree was completely scorched, to a point where I thought it might die. And since pines don't like alkaline water and our well water was high in alkalinity, even the manual watering I provided was just not to its taste. Literally. 

But I refused to give up on it. I have great sympathy - maybe too much -- for anything that is originally planted in the wrong place, because that is the story of my life. Born in the middle of the city, should have been in the country. I spent most of my childhood acutely aware that somehow, I'd been mailed to the wrong address, and yet I still stayed for 30 years or so before finally getting the guts to jailbreak myself out and into a small country town in Central California, which was better, but still not the four-seasons climate I always felt I belonged in.  

...become big and beautiful in the right places

So when I noticed the pine tree was failing, of course I decided to dig it up and put it into a temporary container and bring it along with us to the Pacific Northwest.

It is no easy task bringing plants along when you're moving 14 hours north. They take up a lot of space that could be used for other possessions and by nature, potted plants are not always stable when riding in the back of a car or truck.  But when Big Ag brought a bunch of things north a couple of months before we moved, I made him put the pine tree in the back seat of the truck and told him to find a shady spot for it someplace around the property we were going to be living on. Which, God bless him, he did. 

It sat here in Oregon for two months, with no water other than what the rain provided. But lo and behold, when I finally got up here, it looked better than it had during its entire time in Paso Robles. Lots of new needles, and the burned side (above) at least appeared to not be getting any worse. 

Sometimes the circumstances don't need to be perfect for us to leave and go to a new place; we just need to gather our courage, and go. As Goethe once said, "whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

And sometimes there is even more than one right place!

Since it's been growing each day since it's been here, today I transplanted the Scotch Pine into a new, larger container, which will hold it nicely until we find a home we like and can plant it on the property somewhere. The scorched needles have dropped, and slowly new growth is appearing all over the tree. So it is when you end up in the right place. Old wounds from being in the wrong place begin to heal, and you begin the process of growth again. 

But it's the beginning it that's the key to everything, I think. Dreams were not meant to stay dreams forever; that's not what we were given the dreams for. And that's true whether you're a little Christmas pine tree longing for the cloud forest or a human being longing for a new home.

Begin it.