2014-07-03 – For the last week or so, I’ve been planting trees: three so far, one more today. One red oak, two sugar maples, and a ginkgo.

These are small trees. The oak we bought at Home Depot, but we couldn’t find any sugar maples or the ginkgo in sizes we could transport at nearby home-supply stores or nurseries. So Kit ordered them online. The first to arrive, a sugar maple, was so thin and sparse that I laughed at it. Kit didn’t like that. But we planted it and tied it to a stake and have been watering it like crazy. The wilty leaves have finally perked up. The red oak, of course, was the strongest. The second sugar maple is short but sturdy. The ginkgo is like that as well.

We have a number of other trees on our small property and on the parkway. We have a huge sycamore and two unspecified, but mature, maples. In the backyard, where the ginkgo is going, we have a sickly river birch that we planted last year and a healthy white pine that we planted several years ago. The tiny trees we planted this week have a long way to go.

We’re not talking “instant gratification” here.

We live in an age of instant gratification. You see it in commerce. Buy now on credit. You see it in education, where everything is now measured by instant results. You see it in politics. Oh, yes, you see it in politics. Not only do we have daily polls that measure nothing more than whims. You see it in the politics of personal destruction, where today’s point is worth more than a long-standing working relationship.

No one is planting trees. They take too long to mature.