It was the trees that pulled my daughter and I into a romance with my house. I thought the lot was forested 46 years ago when we moved in. Not really, not like now. Today on GoogleEarth’s drone view the house is invisible, buried in trees. A vendor of solar panels told me to cut them down so I could install his product. It would help the planet.
He did not grasp how these giants mark time. The locust tree off the patio has a dimming scar. It told me on my arrival that back in the tree’s youth it had grown into a metal fence, a fence long gone. Now the scar has grown higher up the trunk and lost its depth. Surrounding bark has nearly forgotten the injury.
Another tree is older than the house. It would take more than two of us to encircle it hug-wise. Only two years ago did I learn its name, Katsura. The expert who came to tell me that yes the tree was moribund, but we could delay the end, also said he had never seen a Katsura that old.
Once-young trees have even eaten up the sunshine that used to produce a fine tomato crop for me. This year a few tomatoes are getting ready to turn color, but the plants no longer have that old exuberance. Expanding maple branches shade their mornings, and they gasp for sustenance only half of each day.
Next year my house will celebrate it’s 100th birthday. I will eat tomatoes from the farmers market and let the maple shade expand. Sheltered, cave-like in my house beneath its arbor, I will listen to leaves shoosh in the wind, echoes of when my growing children once tusseled in the grass below.
I won’t be installing those solar panels. Instead, my trees will be exhaling an abundance of carbon dioxide, doing our part for the planet.
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