my father and i went to the winchester mahoney's in the afternoon to finally pick out some trees for the backyard. we've been there every single weekend for the past few weeks, checking out their expanding tree selection. my sister was meeting us there but left soon afterwards afer hailey got a little irritated and began barking, attracting the attention of other customers.

one thing i didn't know before looking for trees to buy is that trees are categorized not by height - which can vary from tree to tree - but rather by trunk diameter and container size. we knew we wanted to get a kwanzan flowering cherry. how big was limited by how large a container we can carry. the biggest one we could still manage to drag was approximately 25 gallons, with a trunk diameter of 1.75-2" ($260). a few were opened, but we picked a tree that had the branches still bundled up for easier transport. for our second tree we decided on a flowering cherry plum, a 'krauter vesuvius.' we also got a 25 gallon size, but the tree had a smaller diameter of 1.50" ($230). i also really wanted a witch hazel bush based on how fragrant it was, but we didn't have a place for it in the backyard. while my father paid at the cashier kiosk, i pushed the trees onto the parking lot, tagged by a young kid who worked at the nursery helping people load trees into cars. together the three of us managed to squeeze the two trees into the back of the honda element with the crowns poking out of the back.

back at home we were ready to plant our new trees but unfortunately the ground was still frozen in places, so we have to wait a few more days for the soil to thaw. the trees were so tall, i had to climb a ladder in order to cut the strings tying the branches together. afterwards we moved the trees (using the hand truck) near to where they'd eventually be planted, just to get an idea of how they'd look in the future.