AN APOLOGY

When we lived in the Groveland Mansion in Roseville, Michigan. One of my neighbors whose back yard connected with ours had a giant Cottonwood Tree in his back yard. This tree was enormous! It would feel right at home among the Redwoods on the west coast. Every spring, because of this tree, it would begin to snow. Not real snow but the disgusting snow produced by a Cottonwood Tree. Unbelievable amounts of this cottony snowy mix would be everywhere for days. Don’t open your mouth or you’ll find the stuff down your throat and you’ll hack up a lung trying to get rid of it. You would find it in your food, car, house, hair(if you have any), it was everywhere! I hated that tree. I would lay awake at night plotting ways I could murder the stupid tree. Just when I figured out a murder plot the snow/cotton would stop. And then the wonderful shade this massive tree provided would begin to creep into my backyard and cool the afternoons and before I knew it, I was sleeping again at night and the murder plan was forgotten. But then 48 to 50 weeks later it would all begin again and once again the murder plots would find their way back into my imagination. I hated that tree. Of all the things that were created I was convinced it was the worst. Worse than a Mosquito! I hated that tree! But I owe it an apology.

When you visit a city like Savana, Georgia and see the Live Oak trees with their beautiful limbs stretching forth in amazing ways and the Spanish Moss hanging from the lovely branches and the Resurrection Ferns growing daintily on every limb you can’t help but be stunned by their romance and beauty. BUT now that I have spent the winter with a Live Oak in my front yard, I have discovered that it is the nastiest tree I have ever experienced. Exponentially, astronomically more disgusting than a Cottonwood. It is forever pooping something onto everything around it. Since we have been here it must have cast off tons of debris. It is constantly losing leaves. Then about a month ago the pollen began. Every morning Penelope is covered with a coating of mustard colored pollen. It does no good to wash it off because the next day it will be covered again. This has been going on for weeks.  And now it is casting of some sort of squiggly little puke that I am told are blossoms. If you swept your patio mat ten times a day it would still never be clean. As soon as you finish sweeping your mat needs to be swept again because you simply cannot keep up with these filthy trees. They ought to be called Dead Oaks because something dead is constantly being cast off by it. OH, IF I ONLY HAD A COTTONWOOD TREE!

So, I apologize to every Cottonwood Tree I have ever hated. I’m sorry for all the nasty things I have thought and said about you. I’m sorry for my murderous plots planned against you. I promise I will never look at you with malice in my heart again. You my massive friend are a thing of beauty! I regret I could not see it before. I am sorry.

Now excuse me as I go plan a murder of this disgusting Dead Oak Tree!