All my life I wanted trees. Just trees. Sounds silly I guess. But there weren’t many growing where I grew up and if I did find some woods up at high altitudes it seemed like as soon as I’d start to enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by them, we’d drive right out of ’em. It just wasn’t very satisfying to me.
I married a man from the southern US and he claimed there were trees there. I tried to act cool. Not as many as I wanted I was sure. We lived in my hometown for the first years of our marriage.
I am so embarrassed to tell this story. But… One day I passed by some men trimming some branches off of some trees in a parking lot on my way home. I’ll never know if they were teasing me I guess but when I stopped to grab some limbs they assured me I could put them in the ground with lots of water and they’d grow roots. Maybe they weren’t used to trees either, I don’t know. Well, anyway, when I got home and told him my plan my hubby looked at me with such concern. I ignored it. I told him we were planting them in the front yard and they would grow. He said “Honey these limbs are too big even if they are the type to start roots”. Forgetting where he was from I looked at the limb’s four inch across base and 7 foot long branches. I was sure they’d grow. So…. he did as I asked and… lo and behold… we had four beautiful instant trees in our desert yard!! I was ecstatic.
Well I guess it was about two days later when the leaves started turning brown and rustling in the wind that I admitted that no matter how much water they got they weren’t gonna grow. My poor humililiated hubby had to then go out and dig them all up.
I watched from the window.