Closest we'll ever get to burying a body

Have you ever noticed that the idea of sneaking out late at night with an over-sized flashlight, two shovels and a tarp... with a body rolled up inside -- well, it sounds sort of fun?  Maybe not fun, exactly, but exciting..? Thrilling even? And definitely romantic in the bonded-for-life-with-this-mutual-secret sense of the word.  Yeah, I blame Hollywood but the idea of creeping out into the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night to dig a hole and fill it with your secrets absolutely thrills me.

So that's what date night was last night.


Over-sized flashlight, check
two shovels, check
moonlit, overcast evening with tease of lightning, check.
Heart pounding a little harder, check
Body... no.

We weren't burying a body. We were commandeering trees.  Now don't get in a twist that I'm not as holy as you'd previously thought and now your whole basis for faith has crumbled.  I am that holy.  We bought the trees. But the neighbor we bought them from only sold them to us because he was moving.  Well, the days got away from me and I never got my trees before the neighbor moved.

I live in an UBER stick-up-the-butt community where I would wager that no fewer than ALL of our closest neighbors have code-enforcement on speed dial.

So therein lies the rub.  They are my trees. But if a neighbor sees me digging them up. they will assume I am some criminal and I'll have a lot of 'splaining to do.


So why not make a thrilling date of it?  Luckily my husband is up for this. After getting the kids to bed. We cranked the hip-hop music, shook off the stink of parental responsibility and psyched ourselves up like proper thugs. We donned dark clothes, snuck into the adjoining yard via spiky shrubbery and sunk in our shovels.  We ducked away from every passing headlight. We even about pissed ourselves when a rogue dog walker paused in what we thought was surely The End, but in reality was just his dog answering the call of nature.

We transplanted two enormous trees last night.

I highly recommend it as a date.  And, our yard, with it's ill-gotten trees looks totally hot today. (Hollywood again.)