Turning over a New Leaf. Or more.
Jun. 8th, 2008 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogAs I mentioned the other day, it's a nearly daily affirmation around this house that "Life holds on, given the slightest chance." It's what kept us close to Kathy in the months she struggled with her illness, and even more so in the even more months after she decided she wasn't going to struggle with it anymore. Death came when it was ready for her, and we are still better for the life she lived and the lives she left behind which were touched by hers.
Toward the middle of last week, Eleanor asked me to rescue a baby oak tree which had implanted itself about a micron away from the outside of our garage wall. She has awesome gardens all around the house, and much of their contents came from plants that self-seeded in places that only she, they and God (not necessarily in that order) saw fit to select. Her plan was to move the baby oak to the front of the house, not far from where the town did its clear-cutting of streetside timber a few weeks back, and to honor Kathy's memory with something that will live here, we hope, decades longer than even we will.
She called our neighbor on that side of the house- herself a gardener of some renown- and Betty loved the idea. So much so, she offered Eleanor an even nicer choice- a maple which had itself self-seeded and been rescued somewhere in her own yard and was now potted and awaiting a new home.
It now has one.
It's not starting out as all that much, but there's one other rescued tree already out there, which wasn't as tall as Eleanor when she transplanted it eight years ago, which now towers over both of us. Another is in our back yard, a pin oak which I hauled home from Chase-Pitkin in the trunk of my car not long before that which I was inspired to get after digging out the cast-concrete base of an old clothesline and wanting something to put in the hole. It's now the tallest tree in that whole yard.
A dear friend's daughter was baptized today. For Emily's christening, we put yet another transplant in the front yard of our Rochester home of the time. It survived our move, several nasty ice and windstorms, and last I knew was taller than even the trees we've since planted here. I think I'll visit it on my way to the TV show there tomorrow.
Life doesn't just hold on. It takes root and reaches for heaven, where so many of our friends are.
Toward the middle of last week, Eleanor asked me to rescue a baby oak tree which had implanted itself about a micron away from the outside of our garage wall. She has awesome gardens all around the house, and much of their contents came from plants that self-seeded in places that only she, they and God (not necessarily in that order) saw fit to select. Her plan was to move the baby oak to the front of the house, not far from where the town did its clear-cutting of streetside timber a few weeks back, and to honor Kathy's memory with something that will live here, we hope, decades longer than even we will.
She called our neighbor on that side of the house- herself a gardener of some renown- and Betty loved the idea. So much so, she offered Eleanor an even nicer choice- a maple which had itself self-seeded and been rescued somewhere in her own yard and was now potted and awaiting a new home.
It now has one.
It's not starting out as all that much, but there's one other rescued tree already out there, which wasn't as tall as Eleanor when she transplanted it eight years ago, which now towers over both of us. Another is in our back yard, a pin oak which I hauled home from Chase-Pitkin in the trunk of my car not long before that which I was inspired to get after digging out the cast-concrete base of an old clothesline and wanting something to put in the hole. It's now the tallest tree in that whole yard.
A dear friend's daughter was baptized today. For Emily's christening, we put yet another transplant in the front yard of our Rochester home of the time. It survived our move, several nasty ice and windstorms, and last I knew was taller than even the trees we've since planted here. I think I'll visit it on my way to the TV show there tomorrow.
Life doesn't just hold on. It takes root and reaches for heaven, where so many of our friends are.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-08 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-08 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-08 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 08:27 am (UTC)