The Plum Tree Has fallen, Long Live The Tree!

Our own rose bushes, still
months from blooming, unlike
the rosebush at the streetlamp

It’s been over a year since I wrote my article lamenting the loss of the Plum Tree a block uphill from my family’s house. Since it was cut down, I located the stump--all that remained of it--then watched as this last remnant was dug up and hauled off. The tree, i later discovered, was a cherry plum, a relatively fast growing tree with a short lifespan, considered an invasive in Portland. In street-views, the plum tree appears very scraggly, and the stump was covered in fungi. Perhaps it was rotting, and had become a danger to the house, or its power lines: perhaps it was just time for it to go.

And yet despite this acceptance, I still think it is a shame, that my evening walk to the glowing tree can’t be repeated every spring. But of course, time has gone on: leaves grew, changed colors and fell, and then came our series of late snowstorms. The whole time, I paid no heed to the surrounding garden, choosing instead to focus on that stump each time I passed the site. But at some point, something changed. I was so focused on the remains of the plum tree, that I have no idea when they planted the rose bush. 

As with its predecessor, I only noticed it when I saw pink flowers out of the corner of my eye while driving by. I paid it no heed right away so I don’t know when this was: it could have been sometime in March, or maybe early April. But by the middle of April, when my curiosity finally got the better of me, the blossoms were gone.

I inspected our own roses, and noticing that they were nowhere near blooming, and figured I had missed another opportunity. To my surprise though, when I went to inspect the rosebush beneath the streetlight, I saw it was covered in dozens of buds, ready to break into full bloom again before the end of the month perhaps, it’s foliage that same shade of purple, and I distinctly remember the flowers being pink. Yet unlike it’s predecessor, the entire plant is in very good health, growing skyward. 

There may never be another plum tree, but I suppose that there doesn’t have to be. It was cut down for whatever reason, like a piano player canceling a show at the intermission, and I was too busy demanding a refund at the ticket counter to notice the child coming onstage with a violin to happily perform instead. Nearby, a series of plum trees grow from the bushes: typical of an invasive species. They are away from the streetlight. The rose bush though, was planted directly in the spotlight, amid a sea of grape hyacinth. A new purple tree with pink blossoms: a phoenix rising from the soil, as it were.

When I finished the last article I originally wanted to warn that good things should be enjoyed while they last, but changed it to “don’t take them for granted.” I didn’t want to advise anyone to dwell on the present. Both are good pieces of advice, but I realize now that while I had ignored my own advice. By continuing to ponder what remained of something special to me, I ignored the rest of the garden entirely, and overlooked something new and exciting literally taking root before my very eyes.