A Walker in the Suburbs

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.

Acorns are falling. They hit the roof and the siding. They pile up in the yard and on the driveway. When a stiff wind blows, they sound like a burst of hail. On the ground, they slide under the feet, making for a crunchy or even a treacherous passage. When I’m walking under an oak tree, I consider myself lucky if I’m not beaned in the head.

My yard is not alone. All up and down the street and throughout the area, I’m seeing a bumper crop of acorns. Which leads me to believe it’s a mast year in Fairfax County.

Masting is when a plant produces an abundance of fruits, seeds or nuts. Theories abound for why this happens, but animals are the beneficiary. Squirrels, deer, and even blue jays, which I just learned eat them, too.

The marvel of the mast year is how it affects all the trees in an area. “Not one tree in a grove, but the whole grove; not one grove in the forest, but every grove; all across the country and all across the state,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. “The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. … All flourishing is mutual.”

During a celebratory bounce on the trampoline yesterday I noticed (not for the first time) that I didn’t plant most of the trees in which it’s nestled. Most of them are volunteers. They landed in their spots from errant seeds and saplings, and our careful mowing preserved them in their infancy.

In fact, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that most of the trees in the back yard are scrappy survivors — the tulip poplar, weeping cherry and sassafras tree. They remind me that, as I mentioned a few days ago, you never know.

One of the most beautiful volunteers is the Japanese maple. Early next month its leaves will turn scarlet, lighting up the leafless yard.

Are “accidental trees” hardier than their planted cousins? Seems to me they are. Perhaps they hold lessons for us all.

These days I wake to November grays. Most backyard trees are stripped of leaves, except for one: the volunteer Japanese maple. It waits until the other trees are done to strut its stuff.

This is how it’s done, kids, it seems to say. With these scarlets, these jewel tones. With this patience and this grace.

Am I reading too much into the timing of this turning? Of course I am. I always do.