The tree in front of my house is changing its leaves from green to a rich, red-brown. It is a chokecherry–at least I think it is. It doesn’t fruit. I don’t know if that’s because it’s a variety bred to be ornamental or if it’s just a Flagstaff thing. Even the trees meant to be fruit bearers tend to struggle here.
This tree always darkens sooner than I imagine it should. Changing leaves are supposed to signal fall, but it’s mid-June and the tree has transformed almost completely. Only the tips of its branches still bear the bright green as though it went to the salon just to get its ends dyed. It is bushy and damaged like my hair always is by the time I actually make an appointment for a cut. I’ve been meaning to cut away the tree’s limb that has been dragging the ground since it was damaged in the winter’s storms and to thin out the ever-cropping-up new shoots–another of the seemingly endless tasks of managing our property.
I like this tree–even with its scruffiness, wrong season color-changing, and non-fruiting. It is one of the first things to flower in the spring, and in good years it is thick with bees. Sitting beneath its branches dense with fresh, floral scent surrounded by a complex chorus of buzzing and rustling, my senses are overwhelmed in the most delightful way. Then, just when I think I know what this tree is about, it goes red–almost as if flushing in the heat, or–perhaps–blushing at having been so closely observed.
Years ago, someone wrapped a thick, plastic-coated wire around the tree’s truck and secured it to a stake. I assume at one time this was meant to be a growth aid, but by the time I met the tree, whomever had created the support had long since forgotten to remove it. The trunk was spilling over the wire edges, having long outgrown the small circumference it was allotted for growth. There is still a swollen scar where it was nearly strangled.
Perhaps I over-identify with this tree having once felt very nearly strangled myself. My growth afterwards was absolutely stunning.
Most days I also forget about this tree. There seem to be so many things to do and to care for all at once and just too little of me to keep up with the doing and the caring.
So, the tree doesn’t get trimmed. Instead, it hovers in the background of my life, giving me mild anxiety. I should really work on that tree.
Is this a condition of the modern world–that even things that bring us joy carry at least a little bit of stress in their branches? Or is this what being human has always been–a little bit of awe mixed with a little bit of Aaah!
I like that this tree came before me–not in the world, but on this property. It makes me feel a sense of responsibility toward it, like am just a steward of this place and this plant and not the one with the idea to put it here in the first place. If I were and it died, it would just be an idea I had that didn’t work–a project that failed. Instead, I feel like a part of the life of this tree. Someone before me put it in the ground and helped it grow to independence and all I have to do now is give it a little support. Someone before me put a wire around it, and I freed it from that lone shackle. I did not put this tree here, but I can help it thrive, and in doing so, maybe carry on someone else’s legacy as their secret collaborator–a member of a community neither of us intended to form.
When I sit in the middle of a forest and listen to the movement of the trees–the wind causing their trunks and branches to sway, their leaves and needles shuddering–it feels to me like there is a conversation happening all around me. I am an intruder in this community of trees, an eavesdropper, a voyeur. Here in my yard, the trees are much more sparse. Their murmuring leaf flutters never build into the roar a crowd of trees makes. Instead it feels like each one is talking only to me. I should listen more to this tree.
One day, I hope to take cuttings from the tree and grow its clones throughout my yard. Its dense clumping habit would make for a good windbreak, its leaves a good mulch, and its bewildering green-to-red transformation a welcome change in a bland yard that more often than not is overwhelmingly beige and full of dead grasses.
The shade created by trees like this would also improve the property significantly. Not only would it be a welcome respite for us from the intense, high-altitude summer sun, but it would cool the property, help the soil retain moisture, and create a more hospitable environment for other welcome plants. I really need to take and root and plant those cuttings.
In the meantime, at least we can enjoy this one bit of shade, this rustling mass, this bee haven. Untrimmed though it may be. I am grateful that I have this tree to ponder over. That I can look out my living room window in wonder. That the view is unpredictable and ever-changing. I am grateful that some of my life’s worries are small and that they come as a complement to such beauty.
I should focus more on beauty.
