A 400-lb tree weighed on our marriage. A smart solution lifted the load.

My wife and I have made hundreds of trips to various garden centers over the years without marital incident – until the birch tree trouble of 2024.  

We had agreed to replace two birch trees we’d lost over the last few years. And we had also agreed (this point is under contention) that we’d buy trees small enough that I could maneuver. 

We entered the section of the garden center that might have been called “The-biggest-trees-you-should-buy-if-you-don’t-want-to-rent-any-heavy-equipment.” She stared disapprovingly at the skimpy trees that were already pushing the limits of what I could handle. Their trunks were the size of her wrist, and my wife has tiny wrists. She tilted her head and stepped back. Not a good sign. 

Moments later, I found myself looking up at a 15-foot birch tree with a root ball the size of one of those large exercise balls people sit on. I asked the guy who worked there how much the root ball weighed. He said, “About 400 pounds.” Loudly – so my wife would hear – I said, “So you’d have to be an NFL lineman to handle that tree, huh?”

He nodded. I gave my wife a sympathetic look with a head tilt of my own that said, “I wish it were possible, I really do.” Game over, I thought.

“Call Brian,” she said. Brian is our very strong, but not NFL-lineman-strong, firefighter son-in-law. I called Brian and handed him a softball he could hit out of the park. All he had to do was say some version of “Yeah, that’s too big.”  

The next day Brian backed his pickup into my drive, 800 pounds of birch in the bed. A half hour later we had managed to zig, zag, push, and grunt the two root balls 5 feet down the truck bed and off the edge of the tailgate. Now we just had to drag them 35 feet up a gravel path that was on an incline.  

Two hours later, Brian left, the trees rooted to the driveway where they’d landed.

My wife tilted her head again.

The next morning, I woke up early. I circled the trees. I noted the bent furniture dolly we’d tried and the inadequate aluminum ladder we thought we could use as a glide. I crouched down. I kicked one of the root balls.

Maybe we were trying to solve the wrong problem, which we’d framed as “How to move a 400-pound tree.” What if we redefined the problem, which is pretty much what I do for a living. As a creative director at an ad agency, I am always asking our teams to come up with better problems, to ask less obvious questions. That’s the key to finding creative solutions.  

What if we asked the question, “How do we make the trees lighter?”  

An hour later I had one of the trees planted. I texted Brian a picture. He texted back, “How in the world ...” I could have sent him another picture of the 300-pound pile of clay, dirt, and rocks that I chiseled out of each root ball, but I didn’t.  

I waited two months to write this story because I wanted to make sure that removing all the dirt around the roots didn’t harm the trees in any way. I filled the holes with loamy black soil from my compost pile, which must have made the trees happy because they’ve grown almost 2 feet since I planted them.  

I’ve gotten so much joy out of solving this problem. These trees aren’t just trees to me: They are reminders of all the times I aim too low. The times I default to the status quo and do things the way I’ve always done them. The times I let pragmatism overrule imagination. 

I look at the trees, tall and solid, already casting shadows, and I am thankful to have a partner who makes me look up to see what’s possible.