In suburban America, front yards are on full display, but the backyard is a retreat meant mostly for the homeowner. Visitors will use the front yard as a start to a more formal entrance, but in the end, we homeowners retreat to the back, where we can filter out our “cultural urban differences.” That is a euphemistic phrase for barking dogs, run down cars parked on lawns, the latest political signage, horrible parenting methods, drifting cigarette smoke, and nut-sedge so tall it has gone to seed.
In our backyard, we are protected by the magnificent arching drapery of our mature black gum tree, whose branches are almost two feet around and spread out one hundred feet in every direction. When I look up at our tree from my porch, I see a structured guide, a canopy where every limb is like a chapter delineating my garden below. It is like looking at one of those perfect outlines for a term paper with Roman numerals, the ideal model for flawless organization. So enveloping are its branches and encompassing its contour, that living near it almost feels like living in a treehouse.
Our backyard tree is not the type of gum one usually finds in southwestern Indiana. It is a plant in the tupelo family and finds a more comfortable home in the deep south growing in swampy water where its suckers sprout in the humidity to form an undergrowth of saplings. Unlike real gum trees around the Midwest, black gums do not rain gumballs, those woody brown golf spheres that look like miniature medieval weapons and proliferate like Carter’s liver pills.
Up until a couple of years ago a gardener could not find and plant a black gum tree through a nursery purchase. It had to be inherited and grow wild, which is how ours begun some sixty years ago. They are available now through the science of hormonal stimulants, and in my opinion are one of the best tree choices if you want a stunning fall display of color. Long serrated leaves ranging from yellows to purples to deep reds dominate the landscape when Halloween beckons, and aside from a two-week period in June when the allergy-loaded pollen drifts down in clumps, our gum tree sits anchored like an entire forest unto itself, enveloping a field of liriope we planted underneath. The local blue heron that needs a long runway to reach our pond has had to be content with fly-by appearances and now avoids our pond altogether. Our koi appreciate that.
Back in ’08 when a storm left two inches of ice over southern Indiana and Kentucky, the weight of the ice took out the top branches and bent the others down so far they almost touched our driveway. With frigid conditions and no power, we waited the storm out, listening to what sounded like gunfire outside as branches around the neighborhood popped and snapped and crashed to the ground, and one tree after another became disabled. Miraculously, our tree lifted itself up as the ice melted, and resumed some form of self-rehabilitation.
Since that time, its health has been on a slippery slope, even without the weight of ice. With no leader branch taking over the top, and repeated trimmings to keep branches off our house, our tree has been trying to survive on the growth of new suckers. In other words, it has nowhere to stretch out and grow in a manner consistent with its nature and will probably need to be harvested within two to three years, baring a miracle.
Cutting down this tree will be a tough pill to swallow for us when it forms the focal point for our garden landscape. Our black gum has always reached out in every direction and provided the stage for every performance when we walk out our back door. Woodpeckers—downy, red-headed and piliated—all dip in and out to lap up insects, while dozens of songbirds make their rounds. Their songs cheer the air and provide a layer of calm, noiseless noise now popularly known as white noise. Even a shy pair of mourning doves, normally early risers, hang out all day in the lower branches and make small talk until they become too self-conscious.
Deep in the recesses of our backyard lies an ancient septic tank, positioned like some UFO in Area 51. It is difficult to believe that such a potentially toxic container could be hidden in such a peaceful environment. Arborists, master gardeners, and city officials have visited and ruled out the possibility that chemicals are leaching out of the tank and slowly killing our tree. According to the experts there are no girdling roots, no insects damage and nothing that would signal that the tree should be dying. We are left to accept this fact about our tree: that all living things perish at some point, and to embrace the mystery of this death event as part of life’s cycle. Still, I am having a difficult time imagining the visual I will have peering out from the third bay of the garage, my art studio, without seeing the protective arms of our black gum, Nyssa sylvatica. When it is gone, and the stump ground down, our tree will no longer reach out to invite all that is natural into my workspace, nor provide the phenomenon of an energetic conduit to my art.
I once read an essay about climate change and global warming that posed a bewildering simple question: Do you know what it is like to have a cold? Well, of course you do, right? It’s that punky feeling we all have felt from sneezing, puffy eyes, a runny nose, and a low-grade fever. That, the essay stated, is exactly how the earth feels all the time. Our precious Earth is heating up, and it is sick and tired of being sick and tired. Could it be that our tree is dying from a century-old cold caught from the Earth as it gasps for a shallow breath of ozone?
For the last half hour, I have been perched under our gum tree’s huge umbrella. A lone crow in the top branches has demanded my attention with its full range of clicks, rattles, and flashy ca-caws. Despite the intrusion, it is a reminder to me that we are to embrace the interruptions life throws our way, and that all things work together, even when what is happening makes us mournful and we suffer a loss. I am saddened every time I look up through our gum and see mostly open sky instead of leaves. However, I am also reminded that the mystery of the ‘08 ice storm has purpose, and trust that Mother Nature’s give and take will bring new life out of this death. My garden will eventually adjust to the loss also and restore in me the hope that nature is resilient and clever, opportunistic but fair.
With that in mind, I observe the guardian tree of our backyard slowly weakening into a mere skeleton of what it was before. It has not asked one thing from me except acknowledgement of the beauty and protection it shared willingly as if a member of our family. If we accept the idea that nature is resilient and will always bounce back under adversity, it is because of the raw strength it has displayed over eons of adversity. While our splendid black gum tree is a symbol for what life offers if we will stretch out our arms in solidarity, even love may save the world after all, but it may have to come from different arms when those of this tree are gone and no longer wrapped around our backyard in a giant hug.