Liberate the Tree

Returning from Taos and with the fire of the Rio Grande in my heart, I was determined to liberate the tree in my back yard.

My “yard” is actually an asphalt driveway with a trash shed. Off to the side stands a thin, malnourished tree of no distinct leaf variety I can determine. When the owners of this property had the idea to tar over this entire 100-s.f. plot of land, they also decided to tar in the base of the tree. Adding insult to injury, they then positioned the apartment building’s garbage cans beneath the tree.

As a result of careless neighbors and strong winds, the garbage doesn’t always end up in the bins, but instead gets littered at the base of the tree. When I moved here in winter, the sight of the garbage-filled tree immediately irked me, but it was too cold and inhospitable to go outside and work in the yard to clean it up. And it would indeed be work. That garbage had been accumulating there for months, if not years.

On the first warm day of spring, I moved those garbage cans into the trash shed––which is where they belong, not at the base of a tree. Then I got to work on reviving the tree. Short of renting a jackhammer to break up the asphalt surrounding it, I swept the area free of litter and tried my best to aerate its dirt-covered roots (with a spade).

I pulled up fresh and rotting weeds, and handpicked every minute piece of garbage that codified itself in my outdoor living space. After spreading red cedar mulch around the chain-link fence perimeter, I turned my attention to giving the tree a new lease on life. I padded its base with a fluffy, healthy padding of mulch and on its naked branches, I hung a bird feeder.

Sparrows now flutter and peck in the tree’s branches, and the other day, a cardinal stopped by for a perch. Meager and perhaps ill-fated, the tree is budding leaves today. What a wild life.