Tree Hugging House

My red maple tree is the last one in our ghetto to blossom and leaf. I was worried when it looked bare and dead a few weeks ago and all the other trees were fully flowering and bursting with color along the school and in the cemetery and behind the baseball field. My tree was still in black and white. It meant that I could sit in the early morning sun, writing, with Lily at my feet chewing on grass. But now our tree is finally budding, and soon it will cast a morning shadow over my garden bench.

Our quaking aspen is fully leafed out and shimmers and shakes like a 1920's sequined dancing dress. We planted that tree 15 years ago and now she is a cloud of green outside my office window absorbing the city street sounds of car alarms and people walking up and down the sidewalks.

The hemlock has grown so tall and wide it scrapes along my studio window, sounding like a witch's fingernails on the glass, but I love its magnificence. It is now hugging our house. When I was a child I told my parents I wanted to live in a house covered in bushes and trees. Now I do, and it is green out of every window, in the middle of the city!