The weeping cherry has grown taller this year. I notice its height as it blooms in the very lightest of pinks. It wouldn’t be here if Tom hadn’t cabled it back to life after the big storm of 2018, the fierce winds that toppled two giant oaks and pancaked the trampoline.

When I look at the backyard now, I see the survivors: the poplar, the sassafras, the witch hazel. I try to forget the stumps, the ghost trees, the ones I see only in memory.

The survivors are what count. They have beaten the odds. Soon their leaves will unfurl to create the canopy that shades us all summer long. Their trunks will support the hammock that lulls me to sleep on warm, drowsy afternoons.

But these scenes are yet to be. All I can say now is that these trees have survived the winter. We all have.