Plant a tree...

I pondered over, besides a savings account, what we could give

our Jilly-bean for Easter.

I combed the aisles of traditional Easter things and nothing

was good enough. Nothing was something that she would

remember as her gift of her first Easter when she happened

to be a mere 6 weeks old.

I was bothered by the fact that I didn't want to do traditional.

I wanted to do different as I want to be a different Mumsie

the kind that she thinks is weird but always fun,

the kind she will love just because I am different from most.

As I was in the car driving around thinking about all of this when

I heard Kidd Kraddic talking about giving a tree as a gift.

Right away my mind went back to a time when I was much

younger and I always wanted to plant a tree when my own

babies were born and take a picture of them in front of their

tree each year at the same time to see how they grew

along with the tree.

I never got a chance to do it for two reasons,

because we moved every few years and because

at the time trees were expensive and we had no money

to throw away on trees.

I thought of when we bought the house we are in now

that the previous owners talked about the tree in

my back yard that was planted the week of their first

daughters birth and how they planted her umbilical cord

under that tree.

How the Mother asked us never to cut it down and if we

did to let her know so she could see about moving it to her yard.

Her husband thought she was crazy about the fact that

it was not going to be an easy thing to dig a big tree up

and move it to their home.

I promised her that I would not cut the tree down no matter

how much HOBL threatened to do it.

With all of this in my mind I decided that only a tree

would be good enough for our Jilly-bean,

her gramps' "sweet pea"

I proceeded to Lowe's and bought our sweet

first grandchild a pecan tree.

Yes, a pecan tree.

She will be blessed with this huge yard to grow up in

and my thought went to a time in the future that she

will swing in a tree swing hung from her pecan tree,

a time when she will pick pecans for her Mumsie to make

her cookies with. A time that the shade will be a place for

picnics and tea parties.

I am happy with the purchase and her DeDa has already

planted it in a corner of their yard that needed shade.

Jilly-bean is now a proud owner of her own pecan tree

and HOBL and I are happy with our purchase.