Little evergreens grow up

There was recently a flurry of pictures of the little green sapling planted in the burned blackness of Fort McMurray. It was a school gift donated by six-year-old Sophia and planted by her fire fighter father.

The story reminded me once again of the evergreen tree in the yard of my childhood home in Saskatchewan.

If you were a child attending school in Western Canada in the ‘60s, you probably came home one day with a little evergreen sapling to be planted in your yard.

I remember the one I received. It was about six inches high with one or two little side branches and appeared to be closer to death than life. It was relinquished to the basement on the cool, damp floor until someone had time to help me plant it.

About a week later my mother took pity on me. We chose a suitable spot in the yard and followed the directions, digging a hole, forming a cone-shaped pile of dirt in the bottom, setting the sapling on the dirt and filling in the hole with more dirt. My assignment was to water the little thing every day, which I did faithfully.

 By the following summer there was faint hope that the seedling might survive. Then came autumn, when a propane fill was ordered to provide our winter heat. As the big truck backed up from filling the tank it went a little too far, and as I watched from the window I was sure my little tree would be crushed to the ground.

As soon as the truck left, I ran out to check. There stood my tree, totally unharmed. On each side of the trunk was a tire track. It had gone between the dual wheels!

 One summer as I watered my tree I noticed an abundance of bugs, probably aphids, crawling over its branches. I told my mother, who promptly introduced me to the insecticide Malathion and how to apply it. It killed the insects and my tree again survived.

When it had reached about three feet in height, something happened to the top branch. One of the side branches began to grow upwards, and after a few more seasons the damage was undetectable.

My tree in 2011

 I still look at my tree each time I visit the home farm. But now I look up to it’s towering stature. It reminds me of pleasant memories and bygone days. Most of all, it is still regarded as MY tree.