My mind is wandering from branch to bough, yielding loosely connected notes. I’m going to call them hope notes, as in little bursts of positivity randomly assembled.
The Bloom Watchers
I confessed two posts ago that March is a tough month in my seasonal cycle. I find myself desperately longing for color – especially that golden tone of yellow that makes me think of buttercups or the buttery shade I Imagine when Audre Lorde describes the coloring added to margarine in her essay, “Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic as Power” (in Sister Outsider). In mid-spring I surveilled my yard, eyeing the bulb stalks and tree buds each day, sizing up their states of becoming. Day after day, week after week, there was virtually no visible change. Then around two weeks ago the miraculous happened, as it will in nature. I awoke to find the first daffodil fully in bloom. Two days later, that flower had been joined by a few shy others. I find reassurance in the way they are willing to return — the plants, and shrubs, and mosses, and mushrooms — every year. I wonder if they are also watching week by week and day by day, waiting for us to finally don our springtime colors. I wonder if they are seeing Easter eggs and Seder plates, pastel baskets and church hats, as our blooms.
Angel Trees
Angels might exist in the form of trees. The Angel Oak on John’s Island outside of Charleston, SC is a majestic mama tree with roots thick enough to nest in. I visited the Angel Oak with my husband while I was working on the research for my last work of history. The tree, many hundreds of years old, arches over the small parcel of land and dirt road that surround it. Brackets support the bowed branches in places, and signs warn visitors not to touch. Although I could not lay hands on her bark, I did feel the sense of being in the presence of a wise other being. Earlier this year, the Charleston Post and Courier (1/29/23) reported on a city and Lowcountry Land Trust plan to extend protections for the tree by enlarging the buffer area and creating a 44 acre-park-like enclosure. This was a win for local communities who fought to protect the Angel. Now they may have to continue pressing to keep access to the tree free. A second aged oak in South Carolina, Beaufort County’s oldest, has also been accorded a degree of respect by the humans, according, again, to the Post and Courier (2/24/23). This tree stands near Oak View Road on the Cherry Hill Plantation, a portion of which had been targeted for the development of hundreds of apartment units. Local residents objected to this plan, which led the zoning board to reject it. Now the owner of the acreage is reportedly looking for a conservation solution.
Spirit Trees
Here’s a literary notion that I have yet to chase down in the texts. I think several main characters of African American women’s canonical literature have relationships with certain trees that I like to call “spirit trees.” These are trees that hold a unique place in the life of the character, which mirror the character’s interior development, or have a sacred association. Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God had her pear tree as she came of age. Lauren in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower survives to plant an oak tree with found family. Denver in Toni Morrison’s Beloved had her murmuring boxwood bushes (which I wrote about in an essay in the Toni Morrison collection, Goodness: Altruism and the Literary Imagination). These are just three examples that immediately come to mind. (Do you have more? Please share in the comments.) I think we should follow these characters’ leads and adopt (or be adopted by) a special tree.
Easter Splurge
My Easter splurge was going with my husband to join a brunch and egg hunt (for adults!) at a neighbor’s house. Their yard was bursting with daffodils in all the sunniest yellows. One of our hosts, who keeps a country garden on a double lot in the city (full of warming glass boxes, rain barrels, and heavy-duty compost bins) and posts her beauties on Instagram (@mariasfarm) also keeps careful tabs on her plantings. She said that according to her journal, the daffodils bloomed a week later this year. It has been a chilly spring indeed, which feels unexpected on the heels of a nearly snow-less winter. The flowers may be just as confused as we are about the weather. But still, they keep popping up to shine.
Your idea about the Spirit Trees really resonates with me, Tiya. When I was preparing to drive across the county to the East Coast to look for family history, a tree appeared in one of my dreams. It was a massive, old hardwood tree of some kind. What made me remember the dream was how the tree’s leaves seemed to emit light.
I had forgotten all about this dream tree until I reached North Carolina and visited the Skagville Plantation near Durham. When I walked behind one of the cabins where the enslaved people had lived, I was suddenly in the presence of a huge Black walnut with glowing leaves. The tree’s massive dark trunk and branches created a cathedral of dappled light over my head. I stood in awe. When no one was around, I put my hands on its trunk and thanked it for calling to me.
I still don’t understand how trees exert this blessing power over time and space but I guess I don’t have to understand. I'm just grateful that they do.
I recently learned about nurse trees, a descriptor for trees that help other plants grow. One such "nurse" is a palo verde. In the Sonoran Desert, it is common to find young (in plant time, not human time) agave and Saguaro cacti growing beneath palo verde. I hope to learn more about nurse trees on the east coast!