Most of John Ramsay’s redbud trees had to come down this week. John led the folk dance program at the College before our time, and he lived in our house. He also planted dozens of trees along the street. Among his legacy is our 1980s home addition, largely constructed from salvaged materials from the old women’s gym at Berea College. The basketball court floor is the floor of our guest room, and the bricks from the building’s walls form the rough, unmoppable floor of my office. The women’s gym started life as a stable, and the beams on our basement stairs come from the stable. They’ve had over a century to stop smelling of horse.
Our addition still stands, but over the last few years, the trees John planted have reached the end of their lives. First went the trunk-rotted Catalpas. On a visit, John told us he’d never intended to plant catalpas. He thought the seeds were redbuds. By our time, the mammoth trees just west of our home had taken over the electricity lines. A person could see deep into a rotting hole in one of the trunks. Every day, I resisted the urge to plunge my arm into the tree to find out what was inside. I was afraid the answer was spiders. The city took those four trees down several years ago. Mr. Ramsay got it right with the redbuds across the road though, alternating them with dogwoods that create a row of spring blossoms in front of the hospital. But like the catalpas, the redbuds have reached the end. This week, most of them came down. Thanks to the tree committee at the college, other plants will soon arrive.
Chris is tending two persimmons, two post oaks, two white oaks, and one yellow buckeye in the meadow and woods behind our home. At a little over a decade at this house, this is the first season I’m approaching contentment with the garden. The succession planting of flowers -- even in this changing climate -- has established some color every week from spring to fall. This week, the coneflowers buzz with bees. Still, one peachy daylily that I brought from West Virginia has died out entirely. On the upside, a flower I disliked is gone this year, too. A perennial’s life is shorter than a tree’s.
In Maine, it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from my college roommate in some time. Facebook reminded me it was her birthday. We hadn’t stayed close after college. Our different visions of faith divided us from any real closeness, but we remained fond. We sent birthday greetings. When she had cancer several years ago, I knit a prayer shawl. She sent me occasional updates of life. Still, time condenses in midlife. What seems like a few months ago turns out to be a few years. We assume children are still small, but they are grown adults. The last update I remembered was that her scans were clear. Facebook told me that she had died soon after that clean bill of health in 2022, and I had missed it. I had been imagining her life ticking along, and she had been gone the whole time. She died before she turned fifty.
Chris and I went for a hike in the rainy and cool Maine woods. The boardwalk was covered with chicken wire to keep us from slipping. Every surface that wasn’t bare granite was covered with fir needles or moss. Just off the path, boulders covered with moss formed a surreal and rolling landscape. I looked with fresh and grateful eyes. I wondered and shook my head at a world where I could place one foot in front of another, breathe the salt air, and keep finding new things when Amelia could not. I tried to be present and accept the gift for her, knowing that she would never see these woods. Nor Ron. Nor Martha. Nor Philip. Nor Yohan. We would eat cheese and tomato sandwiches in the car. Chris would skips stones and I would bring one home for luck. We would shake gravel from our boots. We would wring the rainwater from our socks. I tried to notice it all.
Back home, the trees come down. This morning, pulling out of the driveway, I noticed how many are still left. Chris has named thirty-three different gardens in his meadow. The grey coneflowers which are not grey are blooming. The wild bergamot have put out pale purple flowers and an intoxicating scent. Chris puts on his straw hat and long-sleeved shirt to tend to his trees in the 90 degree heat, and he asks me to come take a picture of this moment. On a lone milkweed growing among the coneflowers, we find the first monarch caterpillar we’ve seen in two years.
