This has been a long time coming – ten years for me and more than two years for Holly. And that’s a big chunk of a fourth grader’s life. Her dream and my dream were on parallel paths until I overheard a conversation. Her father was telling about Holly at the age of six planning a park with a heart shape of trees planted there. She had presented the plan to the mayor and to the Urban Forester. And there it stopped until I heard about it and barged into the conversation to say, “This is something perfect for the Susie Forest!”

And there it also stopped while we figured out where to plant these trees. Where was there room? Where could they be seen and appreciated? The grown ups thought it should be on a slope and we spent a lot of time looking for a bare slope in a park. We showed it to Holly and she said, “No, that’s weird.” She wanted it by a playground. So we started looking again.

And then Holly’s dream and mine came together because I wanted a big event to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Susie Forest. What a perfect event – planting ten trees in a heart shape next to the splash pad in Friendship Park.

So on Saturday at 10:00 our dreams come true together. The first seven trees went in on Monday and two will be planted on Saturday and the last on Tuesday the anniversary of the first planting.