When we bought the house in 2003, the large Bradford Pear tree that dominated the backyard didn’t mean much to me. It was a Bradford Pear,
ubiquitous, non-native – it suited the purposes of birds and squirrels – and our
cats. It obscured our view of the neighbors across the storm-water-runoff field
and their view of us. The tree’s dual sections blossomed all over with lovely white flowers in early spring. Glossy green leaves offered shade in the
summer, and a blaze of red and orange autumn colors followed. Ours, unlike some
varieties, would bear small greenish-gray fruit that starlings harvested in the
fall. The tree became a backdrop for long, daylight-filled weekends spent on
the back deck watching birds and reading books. Fireflies flickered in its bole
on hot nights. Even defoliated, as the deciduous tree was in the winter, its
width filled the view, offering us an illusion of privacy rarely experienced in
suburbia.
I have no photos of the Bradford Pear tree in its heyday, a
testament to how I undervalued the tree. Springs when early frost killed half
the flower buds, it was beautiful. In the seasons where time and temperature
better-aligned, the mass of snowy white flowers was breathtaking. After the
petals dropped, the blanket of white gave the yard the appearance of freshly fallen
snow, briefly. Bright green leaves would unfurl rapidly in the next few days,
providing a solid wall between us and the world, for so long as the growing
season lasted.
Then, one spring, only half of the usual number of leaves
unfurled. The once-dense canopy had bald patches. Glimpses of the townhouse row
across the field could be seen, especially when the near-constant mountain
breeze ruffled the branches in the usual, prevailing direction. Having taken a
semester of plant biology as an undergrad, I understood the implications for
the tree. Leaves, you see, have a greater purpose beyond creating shade and
privacy.
Grade school biology teaches us how the leaves of deciduous
trees (think, ‘pretty in autumn’) use sunshine, water, and carbon dioxide to
produce sugars (carbohydrates) and oxygen. The tree stores the sugars in its
roots to be used as a food source during the dormant winter period and releases
oxygen as a by-product (think ‘tree fart’). Only at the college level do you
hear the phrase “tree fart” and learn that a large tree requires the efforts of
nearly all its leaves, over the course of the growing season, to
photosynthesize and store enough sugars to survive the dormant period. Failure
to store enough “food” weakens the tree, making it less likely to produce
viable leaves the next growing season. A vicious cycle ensues.
The following spring, only half of the tree had leaves. The
year after, only a third. The tree put out no leaves the following year, and
three years later, one of the two now-dead-tree sections fell into the backyard.
It fell sometime in the morning. We didn’t see it, so we don’t know if it made
a sound, being at work as we were. A friend recommended a tree cleanup service,
and that weekend, in short order, half of the tree was gone. The view we were
used to had changed.
We left the rest of the dead tree in place for several
reasons: 1) Woodpecker bait (it worked); 2) Insurance will only pay to clean up
a tree that falls; prophylactic removal is out-of-pocket; 3) If we let it fall
on its own, it might crash down on a section of the back fence, thus allowing
us to make an insurance claim and use the money to replace the broken fence with
a gate that offered direct access to the back field, a convenience that would
simplify cat-herding. Years passed…
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| The crab apple tree still blooms,but in April 2015,the dead tree was quite dead, |
The funny thing about having an expired tree in your yard is
realizing that it only looks forlorn for a portion of the year. From
Thanksgiving until Easter, a dead Bradford Pear looks exactly like a dormant
Bradford Pear. Only when the sap begins to flow again does one notice a lack of
activity on the branches of a dead tree. I let the wild pokeweed hedge grow as tall as it wanted to, creating a perfect green barrier between our yard
and everyone else’s. Birds and squirrels continued to use the tree as a highway
and apartment building.
We knew it was only a matter of time, but even dead, the
tree seemed so permanent. The view became familiar again. Kittens learned to
climb the limbs, to the ire of squirrels and birds. They grew into cats (fluffy
tanks, really) too heavy for the brittle, dead branches to support their weight.
The pokeweed hedge returned each year. I let it. The squirrels and birds didn’t
mind.
Returning home from a brisket run (I travel for brisket…a
girl has her standards, and the local stuff is close, but no cigar) we discovered
that gravity had, again, worked. We didn’t see it, so we don’t know if it made
a sound, being away from home as we were.
In falling, the tree damaged almost nothing, not the section
of fence we thought might make a nice gate, not the blue Weber grill in the
middle of the yard, not the deck, which had been affected, though lightly, by
the tumbling of the first tree section. Not the roof, not the new hot tub, none
of it. An old crab-apple tree took the brunt of the tree’s fall, and had bounced
back, unscathed. The only damage I can ascertain is to the two-pronged shepherd’s
hook that now has only one prong. I cannot find the other one, only the
evidence that it sheared away from the metal base.
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| Gravity won. |
I warned the person who
hauled away the wood -- they might encounter a metal hook when they chop or burn
the Bradford Pear tree. Dead for years, the tree was pre-seasoned and ready to
burn, and they came with a chainsaw and strength of will. In a few hours, the
rest of the tree was gone. All that remained was the jagged stump crowned by
the fail point where persistent and prevailing winds outmatched rotting wood
and a wide-open view, new to me and more exposed than what I had been
accustomed to.
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| January 2016 |
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| December 2016 |
I’m making plans to extend the rhododendron hedge next
spring. Evergreen, three more bushes will line out the fence, and we’ll have
better privacy from the field that already offers so much of that. The flowers
will be lovely in spring, too, like the Bradford Pear once was. Eventually, we’ll
get used to the view.
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| The new view. |
