One Day You'll Grow Tall And Strong, And Kill Me In My Sleep.

Continuing the story behind the Twitter post that became legend, I would like to show you my tree of DOOM.

A presumed descendant of the sweetgum which grew behind our old shed for 60 years, I very nearly mowed this little beauty which decided to sprout up near the daylilies. Under cover of...well, unless the ladder is involved I go unnoticed...I transplanted it to a place where I knew it would be safe, and protected, and could grow freely and would block that afternoon sun the way Wandlimb used to before she upped and left town to hook up with her boy the original used to.

When you spend the majority of twenty-five years looking at a tree, then it dies and has to be cut down, but another of its kind suddenly appears one day...snap, you'll do anything to have those leaves waving to you again on some breezy October night.

So I put the gazing ball in front of it. Three years passed, not a word. Suddenly my mother's leg is mostly healed (knock wood), and WHAT IS THAT?!

The original tree died in part because there was a shed on it. I joke that it killed itself to get away from us, and that's not far from the truth. The roots hit the retaining wall between properties, hit the shed, then hit itself, over and over again, until 60 years later it got weak enough for the unruly termites to have a banquet.

60 years.

I don't really have to worry about this little tree, do I? I don't really have to worry about the five-year-old mulberry growing near the location of the original that lived 80 years, or the black cherry tree that just appeared in 2002. My grandfather's favorite tree, the cherry tree he used to sit under, not only is still going at 90, it housed baby robins this year. The birds love these trees as much as I do, and therefore the cats are also obsessed with our trees. These trees obviously belong here.

I never go into how all this could be taken away at any minute, because it's not at all amusing. Do I want to think of that, or do I want to make out with look at my little minty twig of happiness? Because, man, those leaves are delicious. Turned my lips numb today, but they're freaking tasty!

One Day You'll Grow Tall And Strong, And Kill Me In My Sleep.