A Beautiful 65 Degree Day In January

The weather report was 'Nice Weather' today, so we set out to dig a tree and transplant it by the driveway. I dug a hole by the driveway where we were going to plant the tree. I drove the tractor and Linda drove the Mule with the trailer behind down the road to the hay field. I had marked the tree with a plastic ribbon early last spring when the Redbuds were in bloom, so I knew exactly which tree to dig. I backed the tractor close to the tree and used the backhoe to dig it out. With the tree in the bucket of the hoe, I moved to the driver's seat and pulled into the field. Linda used the Mule to pull the trailer next to the tractor and I set the tree on the trailer. We came home and went inside and had a couple of sandwiches for lunch, then went back out to plant the tree. I had to use the backhoe to make the hole bigger as the roots on the tree were bigger than I had anticipated. Once the hole was large enough, I set the tree in the hole, had Linda steady the tree as I used the backhoe to scrape the dirt back into the hole. We filled the hole the best we could, and then I turned the tractor around and pushed the dirt with the bucket till we had it piled up around the tree. We stomped the dirt down as much as possible and took a shovel and raked the rest of the dirt around the tree.
Since the trailer was hooked to the back of the Mule, we picked up Stacey and headed across the creek. I had used the tractor the other day to scrape most of the driftwood from the flooding back into the creek, but there was still some pieces of wood that we needed to pick up by hand. We made a lap of the fields and took our load of wood and tossed it in the firepit. We had found a piece of plexiglass, and we used that to cover the cellar window below the smokehouse. It took a little digging, but it fit like we had bought it for just that reason. We were in the 'bonus round'.
We went to town and ate, then came home and I asked Linda to drive the tractor while I used the backhoe to clean out a small ditch below the pond. We were working on that and were about half done, when a neighbor, Steve Riddle, stopped and talked for about a half hour. When he left, we finished and put up the tractor, trailer and Mule just before dark.