The Chinese Elm came down among a series of deaths—first of my father and then my husband’s mother and my mother, followed soon after by the death of a good friend.
I grew up in a family of avid readers and equally avid gardeners. I was fortunate enough to be able to combine those two interests by creating a series of courses on nature writing for the university and college where I taught and by working on a series of yards—my own and those of family members and friends. Our first two children were five and one when my husband and I decided to trade our row home and its tiny courtyard on the south side of the city for a house with a “real” yard. And it was the yard—one third of an acre—that seduced me. I once said (actually, I said it more than once) that even if the house had been a shack, I would have bought it just to have that property, which included a Chinese Elm.
And it was there that I rediscovered, through hard work and practice, the full joys of gardening that I had first delighted in when I was young and trailing behind my father and his father. I worked on the tree line, the long curving section behind the back wall of the house that had plants for every season, the shade bed beneath the maple tree we planted, the beds that surrounded not only the front and the sides of the house but those of the shed we built, which our granddaughter Amelia would call “your tiny house.”
After 30 years, we moved roughly half a mile away to a one-story house that was more accommodating for my mother, who came to live with us, and that would allow us as well to age in place. The house sat on a half acre, and the property was a blank slate. One of my new neighbors told me that I was the first owner he’d ever seen step into the back yard. We moved in in November. In December, while snow fell, I began my plans for spring.
Meanwhile, the buyers of our old house were also busy planning. First to go was the Chinese Elm in the front side yard. Our old neighbors alerted us early in the morning, but there was nothing we could do. The last survivor of the farmer’s fields that developers took over in the 70s, the tree was (pun intended) the crowning jewel of the property and the surrounding neighborhood. Over 100 years old, multi-trunked and taller than the third-story attic of the house, it was a tree that commanded awe and attention. We felt very fortunate; we also felt a responsibility. Carefully maintained by us and a certified arborist, the tree was not only a striking exemplar of its own history but a symbol of the city’s rural past. When the buyers expressed concern, I argued for its pedigree, but they reminded me of Robert Frost’s neighbor, who can only, mulishly, say, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Where we had seen beauty, health, shade, the new couple saw only sticks and danger (the only danger was their attitude). Next to go were the azaleas and rhododendrons planted beneath the front bay window. It was our old lawn worker who told us, explaining that he had cried when he’d driven past and realized what had happened. In their place were two large rocks, one inscribed with “Go Penn State!”
The couple continued on their path of deconstruction, tearing out the lily bed that I planted when I was pregnant with our third child, and then eliminating the hydrangeas, coreopsis. and yarrow. They decimated the back tree line, filled the beds that lined all four sides of the house with large white egg-shaped stones, and turned the beds that framed the shed back to lawn.
But they still weren’t finished. One day last August, my friend Carol texted me a cloudy video with the caption “TREE CUTTERS.” “What’s left?” I asked my husband. “All that’s left is the maple tree,” he said, “and even they wouldn’t cut that down.” Carol’s next text arrived: “I think it’s your maple tree.” The next morning I drove over to the neighborhood. I turned onto the street behind our old block to get the best view, a view that was now quite open. The forsythia that had flourished in the back corners was gone; the only remaining traces were large ovals of dirt.
I surveyed the barren landscape (no shade, just those blindingly reflective white stones): the maple tree had indeed been cut down, although the stump remained. In the now yellowed grass, dirt tracks led away to the front. The yard looked like the setting for an abandoned house, all human inhabitants long gone, having fled the scene of some terrible crime. The birds, of course, had left as well. The robins, titmice, cardinals. and doves were missing; after all, there were no seeds or nesting materials, no places to nest. There was no sign of the blue heron that used to perch on the patio roof.
The sheer ugliness was shocking. I felt first rage and then an overwhelming sense of sorrow—all that work to create and maintain a place of health and beauty gone, just gone. What is the loss of one or two trees in a time of terrible personal and universal losses? Nothing. Everything.
In the days that followed, as I worked in the garden of our present home, I thought of W. S. Merwin’s poem “Witness.” I could still see the Chinese Elm. I could see our parents and our friend Anita sitting in our old garden; I could see our children’s younger selves running in that leafy yard. And I thought of how we were, for a brief while, the guardians of something living and beautiful in this broken world. What to do with all my grief and longing?
For the first time in months, I began to write.
