This is honestly our favorite holiday. We set aside one day a year, in a very special way, to stop and reflect, then give thanks for our countless blessings. Happy Thanksgiving 2025!
As Tree of Life Nursery finishes our 45-year operation celebrating nature, growing native plants, inspiring and educating whenever we can, and participating in such wonderful community, we have so much for which to be thankful.
We are thankful for family and friends, for vitality and health, and for hope – especially during the difficult times.
We are thankful for community, for everyone reading this note, for our team members (who are more like family), our business colleagues, our suppliers, and of course our customers. We will truly miss you all, but let’s focus only on gratitude and not on nostalgia… at least for today.
We are thankful for our landlord, Rancho Mission Viejo who for 40 years entrusted to us the most beautiful parcel on the Ranch. For that matter, we are also grateful for our first two landlords in the early 80’s, Neely Ranch and Lacouague Ranch, who gave us places to get started.
We are thankful for the beauty and integrity of our leasehold, the “spirit of the land” that was here when we got here, which spirit we respected and nurtured, and which spirit dwells here on our departure… and oh yeah… that no wildfires came through (two came close) during our stewardship and tenure on Ortega Highway.
We are thankful that as a work-place family, we celebrated practically every imaginable life event together; births, deaths, lots of kid stuff, graduations, marriages, arrivals and departures, health setbacks, healings, wellness, birthdays and anniversaries, holidays, children and grandchildren, and the night our original barn burnt down (1993). We are the Tree of Life family. We have always been there for each other.
Looking back, with so much to be thankful for, we can scarcely believe that 45 years, 45 actual Thanksgivings have been marked on our calendar. In that regard, we tend to measure our epochs based on which dog we had close at hand at any given time. We are thankful for our whole cadre of loyal nursery dogs, who made our lives cheery. The ones gone are buried here on their old home place, the coyotes still showing respect by giving their graves wide berth.
We are thankful that we are now able to “finish well,” that we are sticking together as a team, taking the place apart piece by piece, essentially undoing 45 years of doing. It seems hard at times, but we’ll take both the hard times and the easy times in stride, and be thankful at all times.
We give thanks this year for everyone who has so meaningfully impacted our lives at Tree of Life over so many years. May God richly bless you.
With gratitude,
Mike Evans, Jeff Bohn, and the whole Tree of Life family, past and present.
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High,
To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning,
And Your faithfulness every night,
Psalms 92:1-2
