In the left corner of my garden stands a young red oak tree. It was a small thing when we moved in three years ago. As soon as I opened the back door, I could see it was already home to frolicking squirrels, and noisy blue jays. As time passed, it grew taller and broader and became a haven for cardinals, cowbirds, wrens, crows, sparrows, finches, and even the occasional red-winged blackbird.
It shaded my tomatoes and mint below. My canna sent shoots of red and yellow towards its canopy as if to thank the tree for protecting it from the sweltering Texas heat. Geraniums blossomed under its caring oversight. Squirrels squirreled away its acorns in the fall, and chased each other’s tails and taunted my pups when they tried to join the chase. Cowbirds zig-zagged its branches while singing their most romantic songs to prospective mates. It shaded my sugar feeders, and kept them cool for the black-chinned hummingbirds. The hummers would not drink the nectar if they were too warm from the summer heat.
This dance unfolded each year.
In the winter, the tree would shed all its leaves and sleep. Cedar waxwings would blanket it during their vast migrations and take the place of missing leaves. Sometimes it creaked, bearing the heaviness of snow on its slender branches. But it never failed to explode in all it’s verdant glory at the first whiff of spring air. The nascent green leaves were soon pregnant with more color, and I could almost hear them making their own food and growing slowly in the warm sun. Fall brought color as the chlorophyll receded and the yellow and red pigments took over, making my little yard a little Van Gogh-y in its display.
Like they say, there’s always a soothing reassurance in the changing of seasons–in the rhythms of life they represent. Something every living being can count on even if they can’t count on each other all the time. In the turns and twists life often takes in the most unexpected of times.
So imagine my horror last fall, when my oak, instead of changing color, just drooped. The leaves were still green, but life seemed to be escaping it, seeping out slowly, replaced by a quiet ghost. The leaves never changed color, instead, as the weeks passed, they turned brown, and hung like sleeping bats that had slipped into an endless daymare.
Even as other deciduous trees shed their colorful leaves, my oak held onto its brown vestiges. It seemed desperate, like it was hanging onto death itself, trying to delay the end.
As winter came to a close, the leaves finally fell.
I held my breath, hoping the coming of spring might breathe new life into my beloved tree. But nothing happened. Instead, the smaller branches started breaking off, and the grey bark started peeling. Ants had made their way into the core by boring small holes, and a ladder-backed woodpecker made it its daily quest to peel the remaining bark, and devour the garrison of ants that marched up and down the tree.
It brought a smile to my face watching it peck away relentlessly, sounding a drum by the banging of its head on the almost-hollow dead wood.
I mourned my tree, and marveled at how, even in its young, premature death, it had become a resource for other creatures. The other birds never stayed long anymore, however, and the squirrels knew the branches were no longer trustworthy for cavorting. The rustle of its majestic, starry leaves had been replaced by a grim silence.
The arborist finally came, and declared it dead. He said it had been weakened by the unusually harsh snow a year ago, making its young vascular system susceptible to the onslaught of other creatures.
It still stands– hollow, and stripped naked –a mere skeleton of what once used to be a tree of life.
In a few weeks, it’ll be cut down, and hauled away, it’s stump ground to the ground to avoid fungal invasions in the area. And just like that it’ll look like there never lived an oak tree in the left corner of my yard.
I wonder now if plants have souls too, and if folks ever talk about their after-lives. After all, no animal would live without the sacrifice of these green beings. Or if, like all living beings, they simply become stardust again, returning to the universe in their most elemental form. A sublime and soulful transformation that releases them from the circle of life.
I step under the dying oak to let it know I am still thinking of it. I look up to the canopy that now opens up to the blue sky with abandon. I look down at its roots and find that an acorn has germinated nearby. The little orphan is still attached to the acorn, its placenta, sustaining it till it can gain all the autonomy it needs to make its stoic place in the left corner of my garden.
I wonder if it knows.
