Planting and Planning

The Colonel plans on living until he is at least 120.  He has to. 

It's gonna take at least another half century for all the trees he's been planting to reach maturity.  

Look, the Colonel has never been accused of harboring measurable amounts of altruistic motives -- he wants to see the fruits of his efforts.  He doesn't really care about any legacy.  There ain't really gonna be anyone spending all that much time after he's gone talking about all the great things the Colonel accomplished.

Primarily, because there ain't a whole lot of great accomplishments to the Colonel's credit.  At least not measurable by historically great standards.

The Colonel has built a couple of bridges -- but, he's the only one that uses 'em.

The Colonel has a couple of buildings to his credit, designed in his head and built with his hands -- the chickens appreciated them.

The Colonel even has a road on his vast holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere to his credit -- he had to cut it in order to get his tractor unstuck. 

The Colonel can't really even claim any credit for the fact that his three children have grown into amazing people accomplishing amazing things -- that credit belongs to the Colonel's Lady, the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda.

With chainsaw, sawmill, and powered hand tools, he's turned a lot of trees into prodigious heaps of sawdust over the last decade, but the Colonel has planted far more than he has cut down.  

In fact, the Colonel's bent toward arboreal replacement is not a recent retirement reality -- he's been planting trees for as long as he can remember, and while his short-term memory has begun to atrophy alarmingly he can remember trees he planted many decades ago.

He just never got to stick around to see them grow.  Thanks, Uncle Sam.

But, the Colonel is, himself, finally planted and rooted deeply in the soil of his ancestors.  It took him fifty years of wandering the world to get to where he is now, and as soon as his feet stopped shuffling the roots drove down quickly, tapping into a stability and sustenance that only this particular place on this big blue marble ever provided him.

Yep, the Colonel needs to live a long life just so he can point to a large shady oak and proclaim, "the Colonel planted that!"

But, then again, with carbon dioxide levels skyrocketing, trees are growing a lot faster -- maybe the Colonel will only have to live to be 100.

The Colonel loves him some Global Warming.