REC TEC Pellet Smoker!

After two failed attempts to find a lunch spot while on a cross-country motorcycle trip in 2014, I ended up getting a Burnt Ends and Pieces sandwich in Chariton, Iowa which ranks as one of the best lunches I've ever had.  The sandwich contained smoked chicken, pork and beef bits on a bun - simple, but exquisite as real barbecue should be.
That cross-country adventure had an inordinate amount of smoked meats, with another barbecue joint in Farmington, New Mexico also quite memorable.

I already had an inexpensive water smoker, given to me from a former coworker's husband over a decade ago.  I've used it a few times, but it has terrible temperature control and the charcoal tends to extinguish itself after the ash reaches a certain level.
A few times over the last couple years, I've looked at pellet smokers, and golly some of those things are expensive.  But one of the 10 Rules of Life is that the cheapest bid is almost never the best deal.

Traeger used to be the only game in the pellet smokin' town, but once their patent expired in 2007, many competitors came on the scene greatly accelerating improvements to the overall design and features available in pellet smokers.  Around the same time, the original Traeger Company was sold to a conglomerate, and has been resold a few more times.  Now pellet smokers are available below the bargain basement price of $300 with seemingly no upper limit to fully customized units.  Sadly, it seems the entry-level Traeger smokers have cost saved themselves into second tier.
Reading reviews of smokers is much like reading reviews of lots of other products.  There are lots of good grills and smokers available; I use the term smoker since for actual high heat grilling, I still prefer a raging-hot charcoal grill.  People are more likely to complain than they are to praise, and many reviewers give very low ratings for things that others might find trivial, or will give one star solely due to something being made in China.
Off shore manufacturing doesn't necessarily equate to low quality.  There may be a tendency for Asian manufacturers to have issues, but quality is still something that can be controlled regardless of where it is made.  There is one pellet smoker which is manufactured in the US that I didn't want to touch at even half the price - mostly because of inadequate support for some real observed issues.  Witness what happens when poor quality and lack of support combine.
What I really wanted in the pellet smoker was small size, good build quality and I definitely wanted a solid temperature control system since that is the heart of the smoker.  The cheapest units' slow/medium/fast augers wouldn't cut it.  PID controllers would be best, but not an absolute necessity since it sounds like some of the intermediate options actually worked pretty well.

I finally had the choice narrowed down to three units, each with strong and weak points.  These were all smaller units in the middling range of price and features.  I probably would have been happy with any one of them, but eventually narrowed it down to the REC TEC Mini.  While still deciding, I had started to create an order only to second-guess myself on it and think a little more.  REC TEC happily sent me an email reminding me I had an unfinished order.  Shipping was much cheaper when ordering directly from REC TEC so I went that route instead of Amazon.  The smoker arrived quickly although somehow the FedEx driver got up and down my driveway in the evening without me seeing him.  The smoker arrived in great condition.  My starter box of hardwood pellets ... not so much.

Even if the box had been bumped around a bit, the smoker is packed very well.  In addition to a functionally brief manual, there was a business card including the direct contact information for the REC TEC owners, should it be needed.  This was a nice touch and is evidence they stand behind their products.

Once unpacked, the smoker only takes a few minutes to set up.  I'm a strong believer in function over form, but the unit sure does look neat.

REC TEC advises that an initial burn be used to give the powder coating a final set, as well as burn off any manufacturing effluvia.  Once that was complete, I was ready to smoke.

When done right, ribs are probably my first choice for meat.  Even mediocre ribs can be pretty good as long as they are not boiled.  Pre-smoker, my typical method of cooking them was to wrap them loosely with aluminum foil and bake them for a few hours, finishing them on a charcoal grill with sauce as a glaze.  Some sauces are OK, but I've always believed that really good smoked meat needs, at most, a very small amount of sauce.  My first meal on the smoker had to be baby back ribs with a simple dry rub.
I made a dry rub from sea salt, paprika, fresh ground pepper and brown sugar.  Setting up the smoker, I smoked those babies for four hours at 230F, spritzing them at hour two and three with a mixture of cider vinegar, olive oil, garlic and just a touch of soy sauce.  The REC TEC smoker worked very well, holding temperature rock solid as long as I didn't open it up for too long.  Given that this was the first use of it, it was hard not to frequently peak inside.
The results were very good.  I was really surprised how much honest smoke flavor was well-incorporated into the meat.  I probably had a bit too much salt in the rub, and that demonstrates the fun I'll have in the near future as I tweak the ribs ... and eat them all.

The following day I tried boneless country style ribs - really just a smaller version of pork shoulder.  I had to start these before I started to mow the lawn, so I smoked them at a slightly lower temperature of 220F for five hours.  I frequently caught a whiff of the smoker when I got near it while mowing, and they continued to smell better and better through the afternoon.  As with the ribs, the smoke flavor - good smoke flavor - made these extremely tasty.

With only two meals made, I'm not sure I'm ready to pronounce the smoker a total success nor myself a pitmaster, but it is an excellent start.  I can only assume that it will get better with time as I explore new meats, rubs, sauces and ways to use these.
Two things that I'm not enamored with:  I like the digital PID Controller and it works great, but it can be hard to see in the bright sunlight.

The wheels on the REC TEC Mini work great when moving the smoker around in my pole barn where it is stored, but my driveway where I use it is gravel and the wheels are pretty useless there.  I had an old piece of scrap barn siding and I employed this to easily roll the unit to where it will sit when I'm creating smoke magic.

Both of these issues are minor with solutions easily found.  I'm quite happy with my choice of pellet smoker.

I'm not sure I'll be trying to make a burnt ends and pieces sandwich anytime soon.  The memory of that lunch is seared in my brain and I don't want to try to compete with it.  Besides, food tastes better on vacation and food after hundreds of miles on the bike is even better.  Still, as I was eating leftover REC TEC ribs at lunch at work I remarked, "I bought one of those pellet smokers and I'm not sure my life will ever be the same."

Ennui

Video killed the radio star.
And now video is dead.

The last VHS players are being made, possibly as I type this.
I actually bought a VCR about six years ago.  I bought a dual VHS/DVD-R player/writer.  I still have a pile of VHS tapes and I wanted to transfer some to DVD.  In the last six years, I've transferred exactly one VHS tape to disc.

Interesting prototypes and extremely expensive units aside, the first VHS VCR was available in the late 1970's.  It was probably some time in the early 1980's when I was introduced to the VCR; a friend whose family was more well-off financially had one on their relatively large television.  VHS was preceded shortly by the Betamax format, but I only remember one family having it.  Likely more actually did, and my boss in high school had a "Beta" player and a never ending stack of PG movies, many taped off of the TV with the occasional PG-13 that were still deemed acceptable.  Conservative ideology in movies may have played a role in eventual death of Sony's Betamax format, and it is entirely possible that is part of the reason my boss chose it.  Shockingly, the time delta from the last Betamax blank tape being made to the last VHS VCR being made is only a few months.

Jaws was one of the first movies I saw from VHS.  When VCRs first began to gain popularity, Movie studios were terrified they would kill profits at the theaters, and movies were priced astronomically high.  My memory wants to recall hundreds of dollars for recent movies, but perhaps it wasn't that bad.  They were, regardless, expensive.
Prohibitive movie costs meant that renting movies was extremely lucrative.  Every grocery store, pharmacy and gas station had a wall of movies to rent, competing with dedicated movie rental business that sprung up everywhere.  Many rented movies regardless of renter age which is how many of us were introduced to R-Rated movies.
Postal VHS Clubs sprung up where very poor quality movie tapes were given away to lure memberships which came with the "convenience" of new movies sent for cost every month.  There was no better way to spend a lot of money for movies nobody really wanted to see more than once.

Still, I'm left with a sense of ennui that the VCR has come to an end.  In a way, this is closing a door on a big part of the 1980's.  Another reason for Generation X to wince as the baby boomers hop over on the backs of the millennials.

We watched The Breakfast Club, probably the movie that better defines the 80's than any other.  It seems like St. Elmo's Fire should be a much later release, but it came out the same year.  Eventually things fell to Less than Zero, which worried some of our parents; they must have read the book.

Ferris Bueller took a day off, and just about anyone of a certain age will have to try not to smile when they hear, "Bueller, Bueller, Anyone, Anyone."

We watched Some Kind of Wonderful in the church basement, only to realize how fiction Fiction can be.

We watched The Terminator, introducing us to a future governor, followed by Predator, with two future governors.

We watched Red Dawn, assuming we could all kick ass as much as those kids.

We watched Rambo kick some ass, then watched First Blood and didn't understand it, only to find out Sylvester Stallone was - and is - an asshole.

We all wanted to become ski bums after watching Hot Dog.

We watched Eddie Murphy's Raw, but none of us could pull off a full body red leather suite (or tried, thankfully).

We watched Porky's and The Sure Thing, assuming that was what college was really going to be like.

I guess there is no reason to be either sanguine or melancholy about the protracted death of VHS.  The 8-track was nearly dead by the time I saw my first VHS movie and we'll always have Netflix streaming.
Or will we?

Derelict Houses

There is a house I frequently go past that has been vacant for a few years.  It is much newer than my house, larger and the property even has a pond.
From the little I know of its history, its build wasn't very rapid, likely due to the unique and customized log-cabin style architecture.  A couple years after occupancy, the couple that owned the house prepared for divorce and abandoned the property to the creditors.  While the cost may have been prohibitive for one of them to hold on to it, it was unfortunate that there did not even seem to be an attempt to sell it first.  Perhaps in the face of a personal and emotional failure, it was just one more thing which was too much.

Empty buildings make me sad - this isn't entirely complete.  Empty buildings make me sad as they deteriorate.
I'm not naive in this.  I realize that in some cases, the expense of keeping a structure outweighs its usefulness or cost to keep it up.  But empty houses take on an aura of depression, and this depression grows to an overwhelming pitch as buildings atrophy.

Houses develop a personality, a psyche, over time.  Walking into a freshly completed structure is probably intensely exciting to new home owners.  I've never lived that, and the feeling from other's new houses has always been one of intense sterility - akin to walking into a hospital, or furniture showroom.  The overwhelming smell of new paint and carpet; the saccharin look of all the unused fixtures; lack of scuff marks showing where people's lives have intersected with chairs and doors, with the floors and counters.  When redoing windows in my previous house, then well over 100 years old, I found mischievous etchings in the wood, archaeology and anthropology meet in real, every-day form.  The feeling was similar to when I found an old rifle with "Stoby" inscribed in the stock.

I love the feel of an old house.  The walls breath with its history.  Peoples lives are written in every nook of an old house.  And that is part of the reason why seeing houses fall derelict is so depressing.
Pausing in front of an old, empty house, it is possible to imagine all of life's little happinesses that may have happened there.  But as the house deteriorates, the happiness seems to slip away, leaving only life's evils.  I think that is why old empty buildings are so frequently described as "creepy" - the buildings lose their upbeat spirit, and what is left is fear, anger, and anxiety.

I took refuge from a sudden rainstorm once in an abandoned building.  The floor had given way in spots and there was overwhelming evidence of years of animals taking up residence.  I looked around and wondered what events had happened in the very spot I was standing.  As the rain pattered on the roof, and through it in some places, it almost sounded like voices of the past, a reminder that things weren't always like they are now.

I often wonder what transpired to transform a home into a shell no longer worthy enough to maintain, especially in and around areas that remain populated?  Fire and severe damage due to weather leave scars that explain catastrophic devastation.  Termites and other insects can render a building dangerous over time.  Poor maintenance, particularly as it pertains to weather fastness can be destructive.  Yet these issues build slowly over time.  Many empty properties are left more in a state of suspended animation.  They stand a testament to history, and as a reminder that at one time, the structure was once not only someone's house, but someone's new house.

Over the years it was empty, the house I frequently go past started to look more distressed.  Exterior wood needing treatment turned prematurely grey, and wooden clapboards began to fall out of place.  Vines started to grow ominously up the side, the chimney was left askew after a windstorm, and trees began standing sentry, blocking the front door.
That vacant log house has recently started to be cleaned up.  If other similar properties are any guide, it will go up for sale soon for a fraction of the value of other similar houses in the area, with the caveat that it is strictly sold as is.  The house will be set to be transformed back into a home, ready to create more history.

Road Trip Risk

Like many other things, it falls into the camp of, "I'd rather not know."

Two of the dogs had their annual check-ups a few days ago.  En route to the vet, NPR had a story about an upcoming book The Voyeur's Motel by Gay Talese.  I got to the vet a few minutes before they opened, so I was able to listen to the end of the story.  A quick search on my phone revealed a pre-article under the same title in The New Yorker.  I printed the article to a PDF and emailed it to myself for future reading.  Interestingly, The New Yorker cartoon images did not render in the PDF, while the captions for the cartoons did, making the cartoons just as enjoyable had they been displayed correctly.

The article was disturbing - as I assume the book is.  The basics: a man in Colorado bought a motel and created viewing ports in the attic to watch guests ... doing what guests do in motels.  With a few weeks on the road every year, I stay in lots of hotels.  I'm not terribly picky about the hotel, other than it be relatively clean and relatively inexpensive.    I'm well aware it is very possible to make a room look clean, with actual cleanliness somewhat suspect.  Sometimes clean and cheap compete.  And apparently there are sometimes viewing ports in the rooms.
In one of my most conspicuous examples of cheap and clean competing, I was vacationing through South Texas well over 10 years ago.  There was a very nice chain hotel that was more expensive than we wanted to pay, with a slightly rundown place (LCI) across the street, "Cheapest Rates on the Beach!"  The hotel was cheap, but there was a $5 deposit on the room key - seriously.  The room was tolerably clean, but the large front window didn't lock very well.  After settling in, I was unable to find the remote to turn on the TV.  Walking back to the lobby, I was informed that remotes are given out only after a $10 deposit.  This was probably the only time I have stayed in a place where other denizens feel compelled to steal TV remotes.  The restaurant next door that night was great and after several margaritas I slept just fine in the hotel room, even if it wasn't the best room I've ever stayed in.  The broken window lock didn't even bother me (much).  I still have the receipt for that hotel as a memento.  For all the now forgotten hotels and motels I've stayed in, LCI was quite memorable, even if it wasn't for the best reasons.
Looking at Google Streetview, the hotel still exists, and the exterior looks better than I remember from my stay.  Reviews for the establishment are largely wretched.  No mention in the reviews of deposits for room keys or TV remotes.  I can only hope.
There have been other cheap hotels which have ranged from exquisite to funky-smelling to pretty awful.  I've been given the keys to rooms which were already rented, and had people try to enter in the middle of the night when my room was rerented, "I'm mad about this, I could have gotten shot!"  Perhaps my penchant for travelling armed proceeds me.  Road trips mean never staying in one place very long.  If I do stay in the same place for multiple days, I generally try to get, at least, a more interesting place to stay.

I've always thought that there was some voyeuristic behavior in hotels, either by the staff and management, or by other guests.  With housekeeping walking in and out every day, it is hard to imagine some snooping NOT happening.  Even I, on occasion, have spent a few minutes peeking out of a hotel door peep hole.  This may be due to safety more than anything nefarious as I can be a bit paranoid.  One night in Illinois, I was sure I was going to be on an episode of Cops, as a woman screamed "RYAN," while pounding on the doors around my room.  But hearing of the flagrant example of criminal peeping tomery in The New Yorker article was a little hard to stomach.  While I expect this was, and is, the very rare exception rather than the rule, it is none the less disturbing.
I would actually think peering in on people going about mundane events would get quite dull very quickly, which makes the subject in the upcoming book all the more frightening since it went on for many years.  Perhaps the mundanity is interspersed with enough novel events to continue.  More likely, one must be the right kind of person to do this in the first place.

The comparison of the subject of Mr. Talese's book to the Norman Bates of Hitchcock fame is almost impossible not to make.  In an early scene of the first Bates movie, Norman peeks through a small hole in the wall at a female guest in the shower, which begins to set off the unfortunate fictional events.
In this new book, the events are believed to be largely non-fiction.  However, there are discrepancies noted and Mr. Talese is of the New Journalism school, which has at times split the hair between fiction and non-fiction.  Hopefully this doesn't happen obliquely.  After reading the article, I'm not sure if I'll read the book.  I think I've learned enough at this point.  Tell-all books are better when the alls that are being told are voyeuristically about something that affects other people.

The vet visit concluded that the dogs are getting older and are healthy with no new issues uncovered.  They received annual vaccinations, including for bordetella - meaning they can be kenneled for a future road trip ... which will include motel stays.

I Wonder if my Aunt Listens to Guns N' Roses

There was a family reunion this weekend.  Normally I wouldn't even consider going to one of these things but I perseverated about it for several weeks.  As recently as a few days before I was still leaning toward going.  But inaction is the easy default and I stayed home for the three-day weekend.

As part of the reunion, there was a pig roast - which was quite an appealing draw.  It has probably been decades since I have been to a pig roast.  When I was a kid, the church I went to had an annual pig roast.  Living across the street from the church, I would always wander over there shortly after the pit master (I'm not sure if they were called that yet in the 1970's) would get there with the roaster and pig.  The pig would be roasted, complete with apple in mouth.  I would hang around and sometimes get meat presnacks.  But maybe I didn't.
There were several pictures posted on Facebook by a few relatives at the reunion.  I'm glad there were no pictures of a brown roasted pig; that would have increased the angst about not going.

Last weekend there was also a reunited Guns N' Roses concert at Soldier Field.  Slash and Axl back together again.  Unlike the reunion, I never even considered going, even for a picosecond.  I almost went to a Detroit GNR concert in the late 80's.  I didn't go and it was cancelled anyway.  As I recall, the late cancellation caused a near riot.

The Independence Day weekend was a productive one, if slightly dull.  I was able to treat some wood around the house that needed attention and fix my pole barn.  I had one panel of siding on the barn that was slightly mangled in reinstallation haste earlier in the year after replacing some wood that had rotted due to the barn builder's omission of a few pennies worth of caulk; this allowed water to get to the wood above the overhead door, rotting it to structural worthlessness in less than five years.  I was also able to put a small patch over what I am quite certain is a bullet hole in the back of the barn.  I don't see it daily so I'm fine with the patch.  The bullet hole is a little troubling, but I guess someone can hit the broad side of a barn.  In reality, I'm not completely sure it actually was a bullet hole, and even if it was, the projectile had to have come form a very long distance away.

Some of the other reunion pictures posted on Facebook were a good reminder of some of the reasons I didn't want to go to the reunion.  I cringe at the thought of the awkward conversations with uncles and aunts.  I don't suppose most neural-typical people see these family conversations as awkward, but I do.  While I have some fond memories of my slightly judgmental relatives from childhood, at this point they are more like strangers I barely know and have little in common with, other than a few chromosomes.  Perhaps that is because I don't go to the family reunions.

I wonder if any of my uncles listen to Guns N' Roses.  Almost certainly not...

I likely would have enjoyed catching up with some of my cousins - and seeing them as they are today as adults, probably with their own children.  In my memories, they are still the lurchy teenagers we all used to be.  It actually could have been quite unsettling.  My cousin's children look more like my memories of the cousins themselves.
The weather was actually much better seven hours away at the reunion location than it was at home.  It would have been a great excuse for a lot of motorcycle time.  The motorcycle ride home would have been quite wet however, and I am in need of new tires on the Triumph.
I was, quite frankly, wanting a simple weekend after an exhausting week of work, where my job has completed a five month transition.

I'm not sure if not going to the family reunion was the right decision.  But it was a decision.  I rarely look back with regret, but sometimes with zelfmedelijden.

"Just as ancient insects that led full productive lives disappeared without a trace, and those that bumbled into amber and died are still around in tangible form, so our personal failures remain, sharp and clear, long after the day-to-day routine and minor victories fade into nothingness." - Neil Steinberg

YouTube is in Fifth Grade

I recently saw a "retrospective" on YouTube and was quite surprised to learn that it is only 10 years old.  Given how ubiquitous it is, it seems like it should be much older than that - perhaps not as old as the digital watch, but still definitely older than 10 years.
I still recall my first digital watch.  I probably got it some time in the mid to late 1970's.  It was small and square and ugly with rounded corners - sort of like a iPhone is now, so Jobs wasn't the original genius everyone pretends he is.  The LCD display was very small and the functionality was controlled by a single button with an inset set button.  I was pretty proud of it at the time; within a few years it was the kind of watch that was given away in a box of cereal.

The first video uploaded and available for public viewing on YouTube was Me at the Zoo on April 23, 2005.  The retrospective included a sidenote that YouTube's original incantation was as a dating video site.  Perhaps this is related to the origins of YouTube being on Valentines day of the same year.  If true, I'm glad the video dating site concept ended up in the dustbin - although I'm sure that concept exists now.

My initiation to YouTube was probably not too much later than that original video when a friend sent me a link to a video of a guy crashing his new helicopter.  I recall poking around to see what YouTube was, and thought the concept was intriguing.  The over-sharing world was just getting going in 2005 so the immensity of the concept was hard to grasp.  I can't help but wonder what happened to the guy in the helicopter.  The passenger compartment does not seem to have fared very well.

According to currently available statistics, YouTube has about 1 billion users - nearly 1/7th of the world's population and 1/3rd of the internet population.  I'm not sure if this is real, as I have to wonder how many of those are 'bots and how many are people who have multiple user accounts.  I also wonder if that includes unregistered lurkers?  Regardless, there are a lot of people watching YouTube.

There are approximately 500 hours of content uploaded every minute, which means more content is uploaded in 60 hours than was done in 60-years by the big broadcast networks.  This is not entirely true, since much of the network content ends up on the cutting room floor.  Much of the content on YouTube should be as well, and there is a startling amount of redundant material on YouTube as well.  YouTube has done a good job of the democratization of crap.
What gets staggering is the amount of space all these video's take up.  If we assume an hour of video uses about 10GB of space, that means 5TB of data every minute.  Much of the video on YouTube is lower quality and compression is actually much better than this, but even if it takes only 10% of this, the amount of digital space this takes is frightening.  It wasn't that long ago when memory was hundreds of dollars per megabyte and disk space was 10'sof dollars per megabyte.
Again, the democratization of crap.

And I've contributed my own crap to this heap.  My paltry contribution consists of some 30ish videos which have been collectively watched about 1200 times.  Stanley Kubrick I am not.
I've previously maligned the hopeless situation of current copyright law trying to deal with the democratization of crap.  I don't think this situation will be resolved any time soon.  Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton have pledged to take a look at this "from day one!"
Still, the ability to strip the audio off of existing YouTube videos is a great functionality.  I'm sure it would never be used to flagrantly abuse copyright claims.

YouTube video ads are much more intrusive than they used to be, but I guess content owners and Google need to make money somehow.  I'm going to agree with Tim Kreider that Content Creator is a rather vulgar euphemism for creative types.  Another manifestation of the democratization of crap.

So YouTube now brings us full movies and full TV shows ... for a cost.  Along with brethren Hulu and Amazon, no real need to have cable anymore unless sports are critical to watch in real-time.  It is even possible to watch what Family Guy called "The gayest music video of all time" or watch American Dad, um, investigate the Cheetos aisle.

Of course, people like me who are fortunate enough to live in an area so rural that there is no DSL or cable internet access are not fortunate enough to be able to stream gobs of video.  Damn the data caps!  "That should be criminal," screamed the IT guy at work.  I guess this is also a factor of me being cheap, since even if I go over my limit, the cost isn't exactly prohibitive financially.

It is actually pretty hard to imagine a world without YouTube now.  In addition to being entertaining, YouTube is a mechanic, a chef, teacher, maybe even a pilot, but hopefully not like that guy in the helicopter.

Trees

Every year since moving into my current house, I plant a few trees.  Every year a few of them die, either newly planted or seemingly established.
The trees I've planted range from some I've lovingly grown from seeds to a row of arborvitae that have become little more than a mowing headache.  I have quite the emotional attachment to the small paw paw trees grown from seed taken from trees that marked the location of my dog's final resting place.  Happily, they seem to have survived a very late freeze this year, despite loosing some of their new growth.

Sometimes I think I should just give up and grow bush honeysuckle.  I'm quite sure that it would take over the whole world if given the chance; if they ever colonize mars, they should bring that plant along and find a way to turn it into food since I'm sure it would also grow even in Mars' harsh atmosphere.

There is a hazy plan to my planting, with nothing directly in front of the house, evergreens to the west and south, and deciduous to the northeast.  The evergreens are mainly screen trees and wind breaks.  I've lost a few planted by the previous owners and have replaced them.  The newer short guys look to their bigger brethren for inspiration.

Sourcing trees is very troublesome.  What is available at the big box stores is usually pretty disappointing and is expensive for what it is.  I'm not sure where they come from, but I suspect they are grown very far away since once planted they do, at best, tolerably adequate.  I've had even less success with bare root stock delivered by mail order.  Mail order sounds very 1980s.  Should it be called internet order?  Or catalog order?

"Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Playboy combined." - Michael Perry

I sometimes think bare root stock should be called dead root stock.  Even with the success of the arborvitae, I don't think I'll go that route again.  The local Soil and Water District does an annual tree sale.  A few of these have stuck it out, but overall success rates are abysmal.  At least cost is nearly negligible.  There have been some of these that have soldiered on mightily, despite being froze, dug up, eaten by rabbits, etc.  I'll attribute this to being native trees grown nearby.  Most recently, potted trees from local growers are showing some promise.  Prices can be wildly variable, but some of the smaller operations have a lot to choose from for very reasonable prices.

I'm somewhat partial to trees that are native to the area, but will try just about anything that looks hardy.  My deciduous trees are almost all native species, with the exception of a few ginkgo trees; since these were once thought to be an extinct dinosaur from Pangaea, I guess they could be thought of as native to both everywhere and nowhere.

I really love paw paw trees.  I planted several of these at my previous house and once established, they did fantastic, eventually becoming gorgeous large, tropical-looking trees that bore copious amounts of fruit, as long as the flowers didn't freeze in the spring.  They are not quite as happy at the new house, since they do best as an understory tree and the little trees planted in the last few years get too much sun.
In addition to the ginkgos and paw paws, I have sassafrass, maple, oak, peach, and whatever the root stock was after the cherry tree graft died.  I also have one tree that I had given up for dead and now no longer remember what it is - I suspect it is a pecan, but it may be some kind of chestnut.  I'm quite surprised at the difficulty I've had with both the maples and oaks.

This year's deciduous tree additions were a couple buckeye trees.  Buckeyes have quite a taproot (as do paw paws), so they do not transplant well.  But I had little to lose, so I thought I'd try to transplant some from the edge of a nearby field.  There is a small wooded area between two farm fields that had some small trees.  I wasn't sure who owned the ground they were on, but they are in an area that is frequently brush hogged, so I didn't have any qualms about taking them.  Once I decided this, I wanted to get them planted before the end of the spring season, so on an early Sunday morning, I drove down to dig them up.  While doing so, I realized that I had made a situation that was assuredly perfectly acceptable with permission look preposterously suspect instead:  On the edge of a field in the wee hours of the morning digging up some "plants."  As expected the transplanted trees died exceedingly quickly.  Shortly thereafter, I bought some yellow buckeyes from a local nursery and again found myself looking like I was engaged in questionable behavior.  I picked up the trees and drove home with them inside the cab of my truck, since I didn't want the tree to be horrendously ripped apart by the wind on the 50 mile trip home.  Any idea what buckeye leaves could look like to Joe LawEnforcement if they aren't familiar with them?

So far, these buckeye trees are doing well.

Planting trees often seems pointless.  So many of them die; best intentions, even with water, do not sustain botanical life.  What I do hope, is that over time enough of them will survive.  Trees grow stealthily, never changing size during day to day monotony, but little by little inch their way up.  My kingdom will never be one Roger Cook would be proud of, and this is OK.  Hopefully I'll pull into my driveway some day and realize that I have my own mini unkempt forest.

"No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods - it was so simple, really.  "I didn't for a long time, but I do now.  You just can't hold people, you can't own them.  I mean it's only natural, a natural process really.  Meet.  Love.  Part.  Life goes on.  There was never any reason to expect her to stay always the same - I mean 'in love,' you know."  There were those doubt-quotes of Smoky's heavily indicated.  "I don't hold a grudge.  I can't."
"You do," Grandfather Trout said.  "And you don't understand."
     - From Little, Big by John Crowley