Lisa's Tree

We had a great thunderstorm when we were last at Sanctuary. The crack BOOM, crack BOOM, crack BOOM directly above our bedroom woke us right up. Outside the tall black oaks were waving their arms wildly. I’ve learned to restrain myself from running outside in such storms. They tend to bring every dead or dying branch crashing down. And trust me, you don’t want to be standing under one when that happens.

Something similar must have been occurring in San Diego around that same time. I know this for two reasons. When we arrived back at our home in San Diego, our sidewalks and patio were covered with the granules that had washed off of our very old roof shingles. And inside, there was a large wet spot on the ceiling next to our fireplace. It had been a relatively small water stain before we left, from a little leak in the chimney flashing. I had been after National Asset to check out the roof for some time, without success. When I pointed out the significant increase in the wet spot’s size, he just moaned.

Then the next day I opened the door to the back yard and discovered, much to my dismay, that Lisa’s star pine was lying horizontally. It, too, must have danced in the wind - and lost its footing.

I’m standing on the grass, looking at this sad sight when my neighbor calls over his fence.

“It made some kind of racket when it went over,” he says.

“You must have had some serious wind!” I reply.

“Think it will be okay?” he asks.

I sigh and shrug.

This handsome 15-foot tree began as three small cuttings. Lisa and her mom had put them in a pot to see what would happen. When Lisa and her family moved to Hawaii, the cuttings came to my house and had lived in my arbor for years. I watered them regularly, and carefully pulled out the two who didn’t make it. To my amazement, the third actually rooted and thrived. It outgrew the arbor, and its pot. We didn’t have room for a full size star pine, and I had read online that you can manage their size by keeping them in a pot. So I simply repotted it in a nice roomy container and moved it to a spot where it could enjoy a view of the canyon.

I have always called it ‘Lisa’s Tree’. I have an eclectic collection of things I keep around my house to remind me of people I love. Some were gifts. Some are photos of shared experiences. This Norfolk Island pine is part of that collection. It has been a sweet reminder of her friendship and the times we’ve shared. Over the years it has grown to an amazing 15 feet tall. I don’t want to lose it.

Somehow, when the wind stormed through our yard, it had enough force to blow the tree and its pot clean over. In doing so, its big taproot, the one that had grown (unbeknownst to me) right through the pot’s drainage hole and deep down into our rock-hard clay, had snapped clean through.

I was doubtful this hand-grown tree could be saved, but I didn’t want to say so out loud. After some moping around the house and a little handwringing, National Asset looks at me and decides we should try planting it in the canyon behind our house. Hope stirs.

Even though he has been surviving on four to five hours of sleep a night (with an occasional face-plant-on-the-desk nap) for way too long, he hauls out the wheel barrow and a shovel and wrestles the tree, with its pot, onto a piano dolly. I find him on the canyon side of the fence, digging a big hole in ground that doesn’t belong to us.

The people from down below, the ones who actually own the hillside, have not appeared anywhere on it to do any maintenance since 1987 when we bought the house. I am the one who beats back the wild brush and plants ice plant to stabilize the slope and provide a defensible space in case of wildfire.

But that doesn’t make it mine.

“Are you sure we should plant it there?” I call over the fence. “What if the people down below don’t want it there?”

This makes the Asset’s eyes roll. “They can’t even see it,” he says.

“What if you destabilize the hill with your digging and they have a mud slide next time it rains?” I worry out loud.

“It won’t,” he says a bit breathlessly as more dirt flies off his shovel.

I look at the deepening hole.

“You’re not digging up Sparky, are you?”  (The hillside happens to be the final resting place for several of our pets. I didn’t think the down-below people would mind.)

“I’m not anywhere near Sparky!” he says somewhat defensively.

I realize things are beginning to degenerate. I look at the horizontal tree with its rapidly browning branches. I examine the severed end of the big taproot in the ground. I don’t think a 15-foot tree will survive without that root. I think if it is planted without that root on a hillside, it will surely just die. Or blow over in the next Santa Ana. Whichever comes first.

So I do the hard thing. I thank National Asset for his valiant effort to save Lisa’s tree, but tell him we need to let it go. He tries his best not to look too relieved. Then he quickly shovels the pile of dirt back into the big hole before I can change my mind.

I’ll miss the tree. But this I know: the storms of life, of which we’ve both experienced plenty, are unable to sever a good friendship. Sorry about the tree though, Lisa.