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| Joe's Poplars |
| Valentine's day is past. Since I'm not writing about human sweethearts, at least the subject will be passion: human passion for trees. |
| Looking at tree branches silhouetted against the winter sky is a joyful seasonal delight. With the leaves gone we see clearly the intricate, distinctive patterns of branches and twigs, outlined dark against the pale sky. Each tree species has a unique "signature" identifying it. Nice as they are when devoid of foliage, the beauty of trees in winter lies partly in our recollection of what was --our remembrance of things past-- and partly in anticipating what is yet to come. We look back on --and look forward to-- the leaves of spring, summer and fall. |
| Then unfold the poplar leaves in strength, first translucent and tender, bright green and fresh, easily damaged, but growing daily stronger and larger, thicker and darker, until they can last all summer and fall. So is the basic annual story of my poplars. Actually it is a bit more complex. There's some incidental or occasional details which vary from tree to tree, or year to year. There's also the unseen underground activity of the roots, exploring the entire area, sucking up tons of water, possibly invading sewer lines. Although the 22 poplars are all genetically alike, their placement in various parts of the 2⁄3 acre property results in some individuality. |
| One of them is close to a street light, and therefore is last to lose its leaves, prolonging the annual clean-up well into December, if not early January. Another has blithely buckled the sidewalk and erupted root-suckers along the curb. A third and fourth are so close together that they seem inevitably fated to annihilate the brick path between them, as they embrace each other's trunks, whereupon future visitors will see one tree, with a forked stem. This pair of path-threatening poplars also has a runaway grapevine luxuriating in them. Through a bygone gardener's laxity, the grape escaped from its intended place on a specially-built support. So I asked the owner if I should tear the grapevine out of the poplars, lest it soar to their tops. "No," replied Joe, "the way its tendrils dance in the breeze makes me smile." |
| I bet Joe won't be smiling if one of the poplars cracks his swimming pool or tilts a house foundation. Oh, well. The grapes are delicious, albeit crawling out of reach, and are lovely to look at in any case. And in a certain sense they are no more "out of bounds" than the trees. For together they perfectly express the owner's unique gardening philosophy, which is something along the lines of disheveled beauty in rich quantity. Joe planted all 22 of the poplars in 1982, and they give him sublime pleasure --far more satisfaction than his grapes. But he appreciates the wild escapade of the grapevine, flaunting as it were the neat and tidy predictability of its intended role of being kept pruned on an engineered arbor of straight 2 x 4s. |
| Neighborhood landmarks, the towering poplars are indeed objects of admiration. The tallest have surpassed 95 feet --not bad for 15 year-olds. By the end of 1997 some will be 100 feet or more. Their virtues and beauty amply outweigh their drawbacks. When I asked Joe if we could at least cut down the most offensive of them, just one or two, for practical reasons, he answered "I find it amazing how one who apparently has such love of trees can be so eager to cut them down. Absolutely not." I got a similar reply when I asked if we could cut down just one of his 30 pine trees --the one which caused the most shade. "That's my favorite," he said. |
| Thus it goes. I still maintain that thoughtfully removing certain trees from a garden or park, is the same principle as thinning carrots in a row, culling rotten fruit, or of editing words in writing --a good thing. But I respect, and even revere, one who would rather plant trees with unbridled enthusiasm than cut them down. Enough of us work at cutting, controlling, editing and fussing, so that if a few of us go hog wild in the opposite extreme it's all to a better balance. |
| Joe is not some simple dogmatic zealot who is against tree cutting altogether. In a winter storm one of his old apple trees fell over. "Cut it up," he ordered. I took a close look and remonstrated "Why? It fell down, but is not dead. It's not in the way. Let it blossom, send forth leaves, and produce its apples. Then, if you want, we'll make it into firewood." That's what we did. Its flowers were lovely, but the apples were only average, while its wood's value as fuel is superb. |
| The English poet William Cowper (1731 - 1800) is out of style, but even though few of his lines are immortal, some stick long in the ear. The opening of his The Poplar Field laments: |
| The poplars are felled; |
| farewell to the shade, |
| and the whispering sound |
| of the cool colonnade! |
Felling Joe's poplars is unimaginable in the near future; let the distant future decide their fate. Meanwhile the garden will gradually grow less exposed and sunny, more sheltered and woodsy. The whispering sound will swell to a roar on windy days. The sunflowers, cosmos and roses must give way to begonias, impatiens and fuchsias. The compost bins, already struggling to hold tons of poplar leaves, will need to become the size of a garage. And adventure will never cease. Besides the 22 poplars and 30 pines, there are 12 blue Atlas cedars --planted daringly close to the house (6 feet away in one instance) for a species that can grow 100 feet wide. But that's another story.
(originally published in The Seattle Weekly, February 1997)
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