Growing Trees

When I was a kid, I always used to like to watch growing trees. My uncle had a growing apple tree in his yard, and I would love to climb up in it and look around. Although it was not very high, I was not very old, and it was the highest spot that I could get to you. Normally, I couldn’t see the progress that growing tree made. Only one time a year did I realize that it was bigger. When the first spring bloom came, I would notice that the blossoms were just a little bit higher than they had been last year. That was how I first came to notice the miracle of growing fruit trees.

I never realized that there was any art to how to grow trees until I tried it myself. When I was about 10, my mom let us each pick out a tree for the backyard. One of my sisters picked out a silver poplar, the other picked out a maple, and I picked out a weeping willow. Unfortunately, the people who delivered it were careless. They left each growing tree on the hot cement without telling us they had arrived. By the time we got there, the growing trees had their roots dried out and looked withered and half dead. The weeping willow was in the worst shape of all, and my parents told me that it probably wouldn’t survive.

I wanted that willow to live more than anything. To me it was better than all the other growing trees in the neighborhood. I would sit outside with it, water it, and play my tape recorder to it while singing songs. I think privately my parents would joke about it, but they were impressed by how much I loved that tree. To them it wasn’t useful. It wasn’t a growing citrus tree that could give them orange, but they respected the affection I felt towards it and were happy when it finally started to recover.

Since then, I have been growing trees whenever I have the chance. I donate to tree planting charities, volunteer my time to plant trees in public parks, and in general involve myself with growing and living things. I even contemplated becoming a botanist, but I don’t have the mind of a scientist. Instead, I like to sit in the shade of that willow and contemplate the beauty of nature.