A cherry blossom festival writ (very) small
When we moved into Chateau Chaos, there were two huge old cherry trees sitting at the back of our lot. One was as dead as a doornail, and the other was clinging grimly to life and producing buckets of cherries from the sole remaining living branch (a branch that was about 20 feet above the ground. We could have reached it from the garage, if not for the teeny detail that the garage looks like it would crumple of someone stepped on top of the roof.) Most of these cherries ended up being carried away by birds and squirrels, but a few of them hit dirt and started growing little cherry trees (and all, or so we thought, of them died soon after encountering a single waterless summer.)
We also had a huge caster bean bush planted at the side of the house in the approximately 30 inches between the driveway and the house. Eventually, the idea of having our own little ricin factory became unacceptable (to say nothing of having the driveway vanish under the tentacles of this broadleaved monstrosity, so we hacked it down and carted it away, leaving nothing but a couple of scraggly little tree or bush shoots and a small pit where the caster bean bush was rooted.) We didn't pay much attention to this particular tree, except for a couple of "oh, I guess we'll have to pull this down before it breaks up the foundation" comments, and left it to fend for itself while some of our super-aggressive grass leapt in and started to colonise the verge.
This year I've been working away at the driveway, breaking up the concrete slabs and replacing them with topsoil (and possibly some purchased grass, instead of waiting 5 years for the existing grass to colonise the area.) Today, I wanted to take a picture of the excavations (it's either work on the driveway or do a native Windows port of rsync, and, even with the help of mingw, it's more appealing to break up and move several tons of concrete) and I noticed that, for the first time, the little weed tree was blossoming.
So I guess we'll be transplanting it instead of cutting it down. Maybe I'll plant it at the head of Suzzy's grave.
Comments
Comments are closed
A cherry tree at the head of Suzzy’s grave strikes me as just the right thing. I can’t remember now whether I wrote at the time of Suzzy’s death, but if I didn’t it was because I couldn’t see for the tears. David, you did a great job - then and now.