Tree House

It looked very different when we moved in. Six little arborvitaes had been planted near the foundation, dwarfed by the jutting bulkhead of our facade. We had a century maple, ailing, on the north side of the house and a couple of old maples in the back. In the bigger one we tied ropes to the lateral branches to make swings for the grandsons who used them for years. I loved to come home from work and swing with my head thrown back like a little child, gazing up at the winter evening stars. Even then, the maples were so diseased and hollow that the tree trimmer said he would never climb them again.

So we planted cotton wood, weeping willow, pin oak, redbud, and I don't know what else. We just stuck things in the ground and hoped some would survive. All of them have.

In the front we planted clump birches, pin oaks, a Bradford pear, red maple, ash and redbud. Any of these trees would have been big enough to fill the yard but instead they have all grown and filled in. I've tried to "layer" them, limbing up so that there are mid and upper story branches.

It looks like an animal sanctuary or the beginning of the movie "Shrek": birds and rabbits and squirrels "tweet, tweet, twittering" around the yard. The tips of the branches overlap, forming roadways for the squirrels to run from tree to tree. It's lush and leafy, almost too green. But I like living in my tree house, shaded from the blazing afternoon sun and shielded from passers by.

Years ago my mother-in-law, Emy, and I would sit outside in the late afternoons. From our perspective on the porch, we would place bets when the red maple would reach or exceed the apex of our neighbors' roof across the street. She'd laugh at the ash because it didn't look like a tree at all, more like a stalk of celery. I insisted that it would assume the appearance of a tree eventually.

These days, as I look up through the mature canopy, I think about which branches need to be removed because they're brushing up against the house or cutting out too much sunlight for even the shade loving plants in the under story. The big old maple out back is gone and I miss the boys swinging on it. I wish Emy were here to see how the ash has grown into a real tree and not just an odd celery-top looking thing and that the red maple is now as tall as the house.

What will the next owners think when they move in? I wonder if they'll think we were crazy to plant all of these trees and have them all taken down. They might not like living in a tree house, after all.