TWO FATED GOODBYES
by Sarojni Mehta-Lissak
My husband, a landscape architect, is crazy about all things green. He swoons over plants in the garden and dawdles on family walks around the neighborhood, while sizing up trees along the parkway. I, on the other hand, dabble in gardening only occasionally but always add my two cents when it comes to choosing plants for our own landscaping projects.
Though I delight in flowers and herbs, I especially love large trees with flowing branches, those which resemble dancers on stage. Ones with long limbs and draping fingers that arch down in an attempt to touch the earth.
A few years ago I told my husband that I "absolutely must have a multi-trunked tree in the backyard." It would make me feel protected and give me pleasure when I could eventually see it through my high bedroom windows.
We talked about the trees we might want, lamented about the height, shape, canopy and size. He wanted a fruit tree. I wanted a tree strictly for form and beauty. Perhaps because it would look like fireworks in a night sky as it reached up to the stars. Or maybe because a tree is visually appealing when we look between the trunks to find a picture perfect snapshot‹flowers, an old fence, a striking spike of purple Mexican sage. I just had to have my multi-trunked tree.
And so my husband acquiesced to my request. We chose Agonis flexuosa, commonly known as peppermint willow.
He ordered our first "specimen tree" sight unseen via the telephone. When it was delivered, I immediately bonded with it, clearly showing my pleasure and satisfaction. Exactly what I had envisioned! Three trunks. The branches arched up, then down. A curvature with sweeping elegance. I loved it.
But this poor Agonis, once planted, didn¹t do so well. We had dug the hole, put a gravel pit at the bottom, even given the tree its own pipeline of sustenance: a pvc tube down to the root ball for adequate watering. Nothing worked. It seemed sensitive and unhappy, and slowly started dying, the green color in its scented leaves disappearing day by day until finally it stood still and dead. We left it alone for many weeks hoping that it would come back to life, but we knew we had lost it forever.
Eventually, my husband dug it out and sliced it to bits like a cucumber on a chopping board. I became depressed and disheartened, especially because we didn¹t understand why this tree had died. But we didn¹t give up easily and decided to give it another try. We purchased a new Agonis.
This next one didn¹t have the form that the previous one had. It stood taller, had shorter branches, and the trunks clearly looked grafted, or pushed together. I tried not to complain, because my husband went through much effort to find another tree and then to plant it with care and attention. Once in the ground, we watched it carefully, eyeing its growth‹and then, ever so slowly‹its doomed demise, which unfortunately set in just as it had with the other one.
The color leaked out of the leaves and the trunks wobbled in an unsteady sway every time a benign wind blew through. What on earth was happening to our Agonis trees? Why were they dying? Did we neglect them, over water them,, fail to protect them from pesky invaders? Was our soil devoid of life-giving nutrients? Maybe this was not the perfect spot, nor the proper region for this type of tree. Maybe we would never know the answer. It happens like this in gardens sometimes, even if a landscape architect is at the helm.
Once again we said farewell.
My husband was determined to find a tree that would work, meaning that it would live. Back to the drawing board. Fruit tree? No, too messy. Weeping willow? No, too big. "How about an African sumac?" my husband suggested. By this point I felt so dejected that I didn¹t add my two cents, which was typically my style. Grief was still in my heart. So I sent him off to the nursery and wished him luck with whatever tree he decided to choose‹and plant--on his own.
And he did just that.
He came home, dug out the second dead Agonis and beckoned me over for a look. He stood there, pointing to the defunct root ball. Nothing. No lifelines to the deep, fertile soil it should have laid claim to. Only one measly root shooting off from the side, hence the wobbles during wimpy wind storms. That was it! The reason for its death. But why the roots had not taken would remain an unsolved mystery.
Within minutes my husband had once again made cucumber slices of a dead tree, and then onto the next endeavor he would go, priming the spot for a third resident, this time a Rhus lancea, or African sumac. I couldn¹t watch the planting of this tree because I remained sadly tethered to my two fated goodbyes. So while my husband dug and prepared the soil, I stayed inside the house. It seemed that in no time he was leaning his head through the patio door, urging me to come and take a look. "It¹s planted," he said. I walked over to the door and peeked out to see, nervous, yet slightly excited.
There, in the middle of my bedding area, stood one lone, spindly, single-trunked Rhus lancea tree. My husband beamed. I forced a smile. He loved those trees. I loved Agonis. But I feigned my delight and said, "That looks good. I just hope it lives."
He said, "I think this one will. "Look at the branches, they¹ll make a nice canopy someday, and we¹ll be able to see them through our bedroom windows." Branches? They looked like little sparklers. I wasn¹t sure how such an anemic specimen could produce the look I wanted, but I took heart in his positive outlook.
Being hopeful is one of my personality traits. I like to think that trees will live when we plant them. So I smiled as I walked away, and said again under my breath, "I just hope it lives." And I really meant it.
Three is the magic number they say‹especially when there¹s a rooting section believing against all odds that the earth will do its duty, if the tree will simply do its job by growing to show its gloryŠtrunk, canopy and all.
Sarojni Mehta-Lissak's poetry, fiction and nonfiction work has appeared in numerous print and
online publications including; Wild Violet, Moondance.org , Awakened Woman, AbsoluteWrite, Mothering, MotherVerse, Artella, FlashFiction and many others. See her website.
