The Story of Dave's Favorite Tree

Back maybe 20 years ago, Dave planted a tree in the corner of his new back yard. A Japanese dwarf maple, that had lovely burgundy colored leaves from May through October. It was basically a skinny little stick and he paid about $100 for it becauses it was (they told him) "a classic traditional tree from Japan". Okay. That's worth a $100, so he went for it.

Now, Dave was not quite a gardner at the time so he dug a hole, dropped in the tree, sprinked bark mulch around it, watered it accoring to the little plastic sticker that was tie-wrapped to one of its branches.

Dave did that (watered it according to the little plastic sticker that was tie-wrapped to one of its branches ) for 5 years.

The tree did nothing. Nothing. For 5 years. Didn't die. Didn't grow.

As Dave drifted towards, and then into, retirement, he started to be more and more aware of the tree. "It's still deciding whether or not it want's to live here", he once told someone.

Then, after some time, his "becoming more aware of the tree" turned to "paying more attention to the tree". He started to take care of it. He fed it cow manure & humus in the spring, pruned it here and there, watered it through dry spells.

The tree then decided that it wanted "to live here", and it started to flourish.

In his retired years, Dave caught on to this idea. You need to take care of things. Things that are cared for do better than things that you neglect. Dave always knew this but had never actually "taken it to heart" as that very fabulous saying puts it. (There's a huge difference between knowing something and "taking it to heart".) Dave took caring for this tree into his heart, and the tree flourished, year after year.

Being a "dwarf" tree, it would never grow more than 4 feet tall and 8 feet wide, but it's health was obvious from its beautiful burgundy leaves.

There were a few very bad winters up there (New England) and the tree suffered some severe snow & ice damage one year, when it basically split down its main trunk.

Dave pulled the split together wth a 1/2" bolt and that held together for about 5 years when the next bad ice storm hit, and it split again very near the original split.

It looked pretty bad. Half of the tree was broken away, and neither bolts nor wires would repair this damage.

Reading . . . reading . . . reading. Calling around and e-mailing "tree people". Ultimately Dave understood that the best he could do was to continue caring for the tree and hoping that the Fates would be kind.

They were. It took them 2 years, but the Fates decided that the tree would live, if Dave continued to take care of it. And so he did.

As ever, time went on. Dave got old. Dave died. The bank sold the house to a young couple with 3 young kids (it was their first house).

Two weeks after moving in, the new owner dad takes out his chain saw and looks around the yard for a place to put the kids's aluminum swing set , and he decides the best place is where Dave's little maple tree is. Fires up the saw, leans over to the ground and a kitchen pot hits him in the head. Turns around to see his wife .... "You touch that tree and you're dead".