A post script
A few days after I sent off my last substack on planting trees in honor of my parents, an article by Mari Uyehara in the NY Times Wirecutter said,
A Tree Is a Bad Gift. But It’ll Grow on You.
On the surface, trees seem like poor gifts. You can’t wrap them up neatly in fine wrapping paper. It can take years for saplings to bear fruit, blossom, or ascend past “twig.” And they require commitment, patience, and sometimes triage—not the kind of physical and emotional labor you want to drop on an unsuspecting giftee.
For those very same reasons, though, a tree is exactly the right gift for certain types: people who don’t want or need more stuff, those who revel in gradually revealed rewards, or the types who are already tending a collection of leafy living things with expansive joy. My boyfriend has a closet with enough clothing to stock a boutique. The last thing that man needs is another sweater. Hence the maple.
Hence the maple, a lovely tree. This one not in the Catskills but in Berkeley, where fall happens not forest by forest but tree by tree.
I hope to send you a post next week set in Röddenau, where my grandmother was born. A link to their facebook page shows a line of trees in foreground, trees turning yellow.
My mother always gave a lilac as a housewarming gift. Always, regardless of growing zone. It's made me plant a lilac every place I've lived, regardless of growing zone. My current one blooms annually (making me think of my mother), but it's straggly and it needs more care than I can provide where I live, but we both struggle on.
Fall happens there tree by tree. It's true, and lovely symbolism.