new growth . . .
by mulberryshoots
In front of our Queen Anne Victorian home, we’ve had a mountain laurel tree growing in the courtyard garden for over twenty years. Then one night a few years ago, there was a heavy rainstorm and we heard what sounded like a soft sigh in the middle of the night. We woke to see the tree toppled over from internal rot that wasn’t visible from the outside.
Our despair was softened by a four foot high shoot that seemed sturdy and ready to bear leaves. Ah, a baby tree that might replace the ill-fated parent tree. It grew to be about eight feet tall until we noticed last year that the leaves shriveled up and that life had seeped away from it too. Bereft, we dug it up and mourned its loss. Meanwhile, across the street at G.’s mother’s house, the decades old weeping cherry tree was also damaged during a storm and taken down, leaving a bare patch near the driveway.
I did some research on replacement trees and made the rounds of some nurseries in the towns nearby. Flowering pear trees appeared alongside the post office, white and fluffy for awhile but were uninteresting to me. Down the street a ways was a mature coral dogwood tree whose branches had filled out bearing flowers, both lovely and modest. I went to Lowe’s on the suggestion of a neighbor down the street and came across two six foot high dogwood saplings for $29.95 each. I bought them both and carted them home in my Subaru wagon. Into the ground they went here and also across the street. Then, we wondered aloud how long it would take before flowers might appear on the small trees.
Kept upstairs like Rapunzel due to my ankle injury in February, I have only been able to be down in the yard for medical checkups and out to the grocery store. Lo and behold this week, our dogwood and the one across the street bloomed. What a wonderful sight to see them yesterday, and so heartening after a winter filled with anxiety and being cooped up.
This blossoming coincided with a new way for me to manage things in my life: to be less passive about things or people that bother me, and to nip in the bud situations that festered long enough, some of my own making, but mostly not. One by one, I took them on with polite firmness. As each fell by the wayside, I felt better and better.
The dogwood blossoms bear out this new flowering of my psyche. Oh, isn’t it great that it’s finally Spring?
mulberryshoots 
What a lovely story! I remember being enchanted on the discovery of a blooming dogwood along my drive the first spring we were here. It bloomed a couple of years, but not in several. Perhaps, I too, will just go buy me a replacement. It was small and thin, and maybe the big ole trees in the woods just crowded out all its chances for sun and nutrients.
Hi Suz! So nice to hear from you. Yes, I hear that dogwoods can be susceptible to disease and other frailties, but they present such a beautiful variety of blossoms–especially the tiny coral ones with the green centers that are my favorite flower, I think. The only variety I’m not fond of is the Kousa variety, which seems more like an overbearing shrub than a delicate arching tree. I was amazed to find these saplings at Lowes, of all places–and you might be lucky looking around too. Let me know if you find one and what kind it is!
Will do! Dogwoods are just everywhere around here, out in the woods, so probably not planted. I wondered why mine did not survive, but I am thinking it was location.