Reading to Elms

[Gita]

The owners of the Georgian-style mansion up the road from me – the one that has the carnival-sized displays on Halloween – have planted young elms along their drive. Rather, their hired men planted them, balled and burlapped, disobeying the cardinal rule on the calendar of tree culture, which is never in summer.

I did roll down my window when I passed them lowering the saplings into their holes, and I questioned the wisdom of sentencing trees to death – especially elms, which had a rough go of it in the last century – but the men did not speak English.

I drive past every morning and evening, watching the elms struggle in the glare and heat of summer. Their trunks are pale and straight like bones, and the green of their leaves grows more tepid every day.
 
It’s not as if I can rush into their yard and rescue the elms the way one does an abused dog, and yet I imagine organizing a posse with pickup trucks who will creep up the driveway on a moonless night and coax the trees (maybe by reading poems) to come away with us to cooler climes.

[Jamie Hogan]

How in the world do you carry all that heart around? It must feel like such a release to put a little of it on the page like this. Seriously, I love the way you write.

[Brittany]

this reminds me of people in Dubai who plant trees (palm varieties) after May. That too, is a death sentence and it pains me to watch them struggle. I love your last sentiment! if only we could!

[Jeanette Cheezum]

Each line tells a story. (I would love to drive the get-away truck when you rush to rescue those elms).

[Robert Morschel]

I love the interjection in the last line (maybe by reading poems).  

[Bill Floyd]

Big-hearted and imaginative, which is a fitting response to your neighbor's thoughtless waste.  

[Teresa]

I love the "straight like bones" as well, but that's not all.  Green things, believable fiction and politics are your children.  You love them well and write them even better.

[Cita]

Edward Abbey would have loved you guys.  

[Gita]

Maybe it's ecoterrorism? Good story. And, fortunately, Franco is still dead!

I wonder why they didn't post guards along the river bed to catch the tree planters...

 

[Kay Sera]

Makes me think of a story I heard in Valencia, Spain. The government rerouted an entire river to address flooding issues downtown. The dictator decided in his closed office to turn the now empty riverbed into a central highway. It was really a practical idea, but the people did not want the highway. The government started building the highway during the day, but at night, the people would sneak down into the riverbed and plant trees right in front of the bulldozers. After a few weeks, maybe months, of this geoterrorism (my tour guide's word, not mine), the government relented, and now the riverbed is the nicest park in the city. 

Now that I wrote all that, I'm failing to remember the connection I wanted to make. Be a geoterrorist? I think that's it.

[Toby Tucker Hecht]

Elms--really beautiful trees--have had a hard time surviving for at least 50 years.  I wonder what possessed these people to select elms.  To get a newly planted tree to survive summer you have to care for it every day.  It's possible, but difficult.