A fast-moving mess

It is happening. Hundreds of trees coming, needing immediate attention, a place to be planted on, water, amendments, mulch, light, care.

We had been waiting for this moment for a long time and for the past few days we, the family and 5 men full time, have been digging, planting, watering and working non stop. Except... my husband and I are used to being efficient and surpassing our goals. I was usually also leading teams or project managing, or getting it done myself. Having two members of the group actively doing their best to stop you from doing what you have to do is new. The children, of course, care and want a food forest. They have been carefully exploring the maps, contributing to the plant selection and location, planting and watering the trees. They have also been crying whenever they can't stablish eye contact with me, interrupting every other sentence and grabbing attention any way possible.

My husband and I juggle between telling the team what to do and how, talking to suppliers, caring for the plants and be there for the children. Oh, but we also need to put food on the table, have clean clothes to wear and keep basic hygiene standards around the house. It has been challenging. When one of us supports more with the children, the other one feels left out on important decisions of the garden - regardless if we had decided the same or not. My husband spends incredible effort and time making great plans on the maps only to find another plant on the wrong spot. I wonder - in a few years, will it matter that we swapped the location of the populus alba with the populus nigra? To which my husband probably wonders - then why do we bother about the layouts any ways? All of this brings me back to work - why do need quarterly objectives? why do we need a roadmap? why is anyone trying to tell me what to do? And then I remember: we have objectives to get closer to our mission.

And that is quite ironic because a big part of our mission is to create a better world for our children - the exact same people that are making us extremely inefficient at fulfilling it.

The saying goes that "alone we go faster, together we go further", except that in this case, together we go slower to deliver less and with less quality. But, hey, we do it together and in the end that has got to be what matters. Messy and inefficient as it is, we are doing it - not so much as a team, but as a family.

Maybe, who knows, the children will be picking apples from the trees (should check with the supplier, on the delivery date, by the way) and my man and I will be laughing and remembering these days as funny, adorable stories.