.🌱 The Tree, the Birthday, and the Modern Maiasaura

Yesterday was my birthday. I’m 42.
And while I’ve been having the worst time of my life, this round I’m being goddamn productive with it.

Which brings me to…the tree growing into the side of our house.
The one wedged between the foundation and the water meter.
It has slowly been expanding into the knobs and thingies on that meter for years like a precalculating goblin ensuring we really learn that lesson about the impact of subfloor flooding. (We learned, I swear to you, we learned.)

When we moved in, this cute little tree was maybe 4 or 5 feet tall. A baby. A “you could move me with one hand” tree. And of course I thought, I’ll get to it eventually.

Then, I produced two more humans (already pregnant when we moved in), advanced at work, and got crushed by an impossible goal I couldn’t stop chasing (sound familiar?).
So “eventually” never happened.

But now that I’m crawling out of a multi‑year fog, I’m suddenly seeing things again.

Like the tree.

And the day before yesterday, my eyeballs finally registered two tiny conifers also growing in that ungodly overgrown, rusty fire pit, disintegrating kitchen mats, STAY AWAY FROM THERE path with the Ivy Monster — so apparently three trees needed rehoming.

So naturally, I became one with the earth and the universe. A Modern Maiasaura.

I moved the little trees the day before yesterday.
Elliott helped.
I stood back, hands on hips, imagining their future lives, an abundance of nutrients and sunshine.
I briefly considered naming them.

And then.

On the morning of my birthday, something in my brain clicked into hyperfocus.

I needed a distraction anyway — it’s no fun sharing a birthday with a dictator — so I decided it was time for the water‑meter tree.

Joey noticed the… serious barriers to my “one day project.”
Specifically, he noticed when he got roped into helping me chip bricks away from the roots and immediately started looking up instructions — which is not his usual can‑do attitude.
That was Warning #1.

WAIT A SECOND.
No it was not.
Warning #1 was the bruised and bloody knuckle and aching hands I achieved on night one, knowing with full confidence that I’d get that tree out with ease, tomorrow.

Corrected record:

Warning #1: the knuckles and complaining hands (among other body complaints.)
Warning #2: (Far more alarming) Joey using instructions.

His reaction made perfect emotional sense — he was having the appropriate “I do not want to do this” feelings.

But I chose to treat it as information.
Information about time commitment, strategy, effort, and the fact that the tree had grown to 20 feet tall.

The roots were caked in bricks, and the trunk was literally bare from expanding against the knobs and thingies on the water meter. And lack of sun. This tree is positively manipulating itself for some of that good good. (Sun.)
At this point, the tree wasn’t just inconvenient — it was about to destroy the meter if we didn’t intervene.
So we began.

It took 8.5 hours. Several broken tools. Twenty sore, bloody fingers. And a transplant hole that was… let’s call it experimentally shallow.

But here’s what occurred to me later.

That was totally just a Maia-ism.
That right there is my leadership brain in action.

“This is impossible. Let me just do it real quick.”

And we do! Me and my hubby, me and my family, me and my team and my friends and my community.

And lately - me with me! Doing the hard stuff - the kind that changes your life and makes you a better person in the world.
It’s fun, you should try it sometime.

So our lovingly relocated, sun-happy, hammock-shade providing, passion project, duty to the universe tree…is upright and stabilized with twine and rods and a Very Big pile of dirt.

I did not anticipate the sheer strength of a 20ft (albeit very skinny), determinedly curved, top heavy tree.

But now? It’s rigged up. I’m ready to attack the plant nursery with my mom. I shall emerge victorious with the Modern Maiasaura care kit for transplanted and misfit trees..

And I have a brand‑new shade area for my beloved hammock.

This is going to be a very interesting summer.