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Changing Focus
By coolgranny in The Paradox of Long Lives
October 2, 2009

Hub and I have been married for about 28 years. We've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of married life. Certain goals we set for our children were met with the angst of child rearing, and it took a while for us to figure out that the boys had brains of their own. Neither followed the paths, which Mom or Dad had carefully surveyed and baited with incentives to entice them into our preconceived molds of humanity, productive humanity. We did, however, instill a good work ethic in them. We also encouraged them to follow their dreams, and they did. It turned out that our dreams and their dreams didn't follow the same schedule, and that's OK. What we forgot to do, as parents, was to follow our dreams.

Instead of investing in college funds, we should have invested in land. Thirty years ago, 50K would have bought a nice slice of ground that we could have enjoyed throughout these same years. We spent 30 years saving instead of spending, and now we will pay way to much for the same dreams we had, but didn't discuss because it wasn't in the plan. Such is life, I suppose.

Recently, hub has been looking at a piece of ground that may or may not enhance our portfolio. The land has about 600 producing trees on it, a poorly designed pond, and a huge oak tree on it. As long as I can remember, the hub has been a seed guy. He has row after row of seeds from heritage this and heritage that. I have even helped him pick the various acorns from all over the United States. I've also discovered larva of some sort growing in plastic bags of acorns in my refrigerator; just one example of ugly. The dead fox in the freezer is another story, but that's for another day. Now, don't misunderstand.

I love the outdoors and its simple pleasures, but one of our earliest fights was over gardening and lawn care. I loved taking care of my yards all of these years, but it was a fight to the finish each and every time I changed or rearranged or dug out something. I always won because he traveled a lot or worked offshore, and what I wanted was always done by the time he would get back. It was not a woman's place to mow or weed or plant. My job was to go to the stores and buy pretty plants. The only problem is that my husband refuses to let anything die. More than once, while hub was away, I pulled and replanted poor stems that just gave it up, and replanted the space with new young plants. For years I got away with "man, that Miracle Grow really works."

This property will allow the hub to pretend he is a farmer. He will get to lure a few birds in and we will enjoy the dove hunts. If I can get him to focus on just growing the trees and waiting just two years before really seeing any progress toward revenues, then all will work out. Here's my problem.

If this revenue producer doesn't work, how in the heck am I going to replace mature trees with new ones without him noticing?