This ailing tree in my back yard has really been through the wringer. I don’t know what kind of tree it is. When the warm weather comes, it appears to attempt to squish out a few leaves. It is very long and lean, taller than the three-story homes it’s near, but it has not managed to reach out laterally.
Might it have something to do with these chains strangling the trunk? Bolt-cutter, anyone? Every time I’m out in the yard assessing where to pick up broken glass and refuse next, I ponder this tree trunk. I imagine this trunk as the tree’s throat, gasping for sustenance.
Many things have been uprooted in my back yard over the last several months. I did most of the work last summer and fall as a means of exerting extra energy and stress—which have a way of building up during a move-in process. Some of my finds included heaps of dirt and weeds, which, when cut down and sorted out a bit, revealed that the dirt and weeds were only a superficial layer hiding an actual small hill of household discards, decomposed trash bags filled with dirt, crumbled drywall, furniture pieces, massive amounts of glass (both bottles and sheets), plastic, old dolls, food containers: you name it. Along the small stretch of back fence is now a large heap of this stuff. There is a small alleyway behind the two-car garage that has been used as a dumping ground.
Some people go out and plant bulbs or tomato plants they started a few weeks earlier. Me, I put on my grubbiest, don the canvas gloves and start diving into trash.