Turning 40: Planted in the present

Well, the bad news is that I can now officially call Mr. Wonderful “my old man.” The good news is that I’d rather be poked with a hot stick than do so.
Mr. Wonderful celebrated his 40th birthday recently. By this, I mean that he mowed the lawn, whacked some weeds and stood over a smoking hot grill on a 95-degree day doing most of the cooking at his own birthday bash. Party on, dude!
Otherwise, we did all the sane and tasteful things one does to commemorate an important milestone such as surviving four decades on this wild and crazy planet: namely, we had black balloons and flowers delivered to his place of employment and put one of those embarrassing “Lordy Lordy Look Who’s Forty!” ads in the newspaper.
Naturally, all that was just a frantic attempt to disguise the fact that we didn’t get him a real present.
Granted, we did give him three spruce trees in a sort of “What a moving and lasting monument to your life!” way. In reality, we’d wanted to do some landscaping for some time and the trees just fit.
Furthermore, I needed him to pick them up with the truck. So the “gift” (and I use the term loosely) had a rather unfestive air of “Surprise, honey! You’ve received trees that need planting. Now run on up to the nursery to fetch them, and don’t forget the checkbook