Trying to Keep Busy While "Waiting" for Baby Ahnika

I was getting a little stir crazy being inside of the house with Jaci, so I decided to finally start tackling some outdoor projects. I spent a few days working out on the driveway making some Cedar planters (from treated 2x4s and Cedar fence boards), when I realized that I like working out on my driveway but I don't like standing on my driveway and looking at the back of my neighbors house. I also don't like looking at the back of my neighbors house as I drive up my driveway. So I decided that I needed to start to block out my neighbor.

By the way, the image above is taken from maps.live.com. For those of you who have never used it before, the "Birds Eye" view feature is pretty awesome.

So just as I did last fall, I went back to the nursery and purchased 5 more Thuja Green Giants (fastest growing Evergreen trees that are perfect for privacy sceeens). Luckily, they still had some overflowing 7 gallon trees on clearance for $25. Right now, they are only around 5 feet tall, but hopefully they will put on a foot or so this summer (the growth of 3 to 5 feet is once the roots have established).

It is hard to tell from the picture above, but the trees are actually planted in two seperate rows (which visually really makes a difference). The 2 in the front row are offset forward 5 feet from the back row. If all of the trees were lined up, they would be 7 feet 2 inches apart on center (I actually used 3 different tape measures to determine the exact placement of each tree). The far right tree is spaced 8 feet from the right property line and 8 feet from the rear property line. The far left tree is 8 feet from the edge of the neighbors fence (everything in life looks better when it is centered, sort of like a nose).

In true Engineer Tim fashion, I went out with my measuring tape and recorded all of the heights of my 11 Thuja's (including the 5 that I planted last year). As the summer goes on, I will put the data into Excell and make a couple of plots to see if the trees really do grow as fast as they are advertised to grow.....