The Tree I Planted

The heat beat down from the sky this afternoon as the patch of shade I was working in moved inch by inch away from me, leaving me in the direct sun digging and chopping at the dead roots of a Redbud tree. I would swing a few times and then dig with the shovel and finally scoop with my hands, and then I would retreat to a chair in the shade of the Arroyo Sweetwood I planted near that spot more than 15 years ago.

I planted this Redbud 18 years ago. From a skinny sapling, it had grown tall and reached to the branches of the Oaks that surrounded it, but it rarely blossomed, and last year it gave up the ghost. Now it was an eyesore, for the house is on the market, and who wants the dead stump of an 18 year old Redbud in front of the house you're trying to sell?

And so because I planted it those many years ago, I offered to chop it down. And while I did so, the sun sought me out and beat down on me from the blue sky above, and the tree clung desperately to the caliche and clay with a persistence I had not expected.

Inch by inch. Root by root. Rock by rock. As the sun beat down. I cut down the tree I planted.

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