The Volunteer
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
I don’t have many lines of poetry at my fingertips, but for some reason, I have these by A. E. Housman. Today, I’m thinking about — and looking at — the pale pink weeping cherry in the backyard.
It wasn’t planted, and I wasn’t even aware of it until we almost lost it in the great tree debacle of 2018. But it must have been there, growing slowly and a bit crookedly, trying to reach the light through a thick canopy.
But now the yard is open, tree coverage is sparse, and the delicate plants, including this earnest volunteer, have a chance to shine.
Such is the life cycle of a forest, even when the forest is in a backyard.
(This volunteer may be kin to another I wrote about several years ago.)
