BRANCHING OUT

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree

Joyce Kilmer

Spring has finally sprung, after a truly dismal April, the last week spent mired in death and taxes, coated with a thin layer of ice. “Get out of here, Spinter!” I cried, shaking my fist at the sky, and so it did, reluctantly, with a final flurry of snow and a blast of cold air from the North, like a surly teenager slamming the door on his way up to his room.

Now I like to garden, but I’m not sure my garden likes me back. I can’t tell you how much money I have spent on landscaping our house and cottage. Actually, I can, because it’s all on file at Plant World. Last year, while they were looking up a receipt for me, I asked them how much I’d spent there over the past 20 years, and the answer made me reel. I’m pretty sure I’ve put at least one of the Plant World owners’ children through university. And possibly grad school.

For some reason, our house is the place beautiful plants come to die, and they do it slowly and tragically, like a consumptive opera singer. It could be the squirrels; it most certainly is the dogs. It’s also climate change, and for sure it’s the trees. We have a lot of trees: Japanese maples, cherry trees, an ancient yew, a cork tree, a bunch of beeches and birches, a black acacia, and those are just the ones I can identify.  These trees are like the Kardashians: while some are beautiful, they require constant maintenance, and they can be really annoying. The acacia, for example, drops stuff ALL YEAR ROUND. We call it the sh***ing tree. The trees cast a lot of shade, and suck up all the water, so it’s hard to get anything to grow under them, but I’ve come to accept that mine is not to be a particularly floriferous existence.

That’s the back garden. In the front, we have, or had, a giant century old maple tree. It lost a limb during a windstorm last summer, and one day, during the winter, the city came and cut it down. It’s their right, I guess, since it posed a threat to the power lines, but ever since they took it away, the house looks naked. “We need a new tree!” I cried, shaking my fist at the sky. The city will provide you with one if you ask, but just a spindly new one, between 5 and 8 feet, and frankly, although we look after ourselves, we are not going to be around to see the tiny acorn become a mighty oak.

So we are looking at buying a mature tree. You know, one that’s been around a few seasons and knows the ropes. The question is: what kind? I want a flowering tree, like a magnolia, or a crabapple, whereas John thinks we should have something more stately and formidable, like another maple, or the aforementioned oak. Neither of us wants anything needley or weepy, in life or in the garden. The kids don’t care, and think we’re boring. They’re probably right. You’ve probably fallen asleep reading this.

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