Two Sundays ago, it was the octave of Easter. It was also Divine Mercy Sunday, a day when even the most hardened sinner is welcomed back into the fold. We did not go to Mass. Our little church was joyfully playing a Wesleyan hymn when the GF went outside.
"Where's the cherry tree?" I don't know. It's in the ground. On the corner, where it has always been. Why? "Because there is no cherry tree on the corner." La otra guera and I had planted the Nanking Cherry last September to balance out the Persian and Woods Roses that would keep the bums from hanging out on our dirt corner. We had to dig up about 165 square feet of asphalt before we could plant anything. Where the Nanking cherry had been growing happily since September, was a perfectly round hole, as though the tree had been dug up with a post-hole digger.
I threw on my clothes and we jumped in the car, GF driving and me spotting. Not three houses down, there was our tree, planted in our neighbor's yard. It was fresh too. I marched down the drive, grabbed the trunk, and pulled straight up, and the tree popped right out, root ball perfectly intact. It wasn't even as wet as the surrounding newly irrigated planting area. I marched up the street, cherry tree in hand, stuffed it back in its hole, and marched back to the neighbor's.
I felt a little like Dirty Harry when I growled my warning that if he ever took anything out of my yard again, I wasn't just going to take back what is mine. "That's not your tree; it's my tree. I bought it at Walmart!"
Oh yeah? "So what kind of tree is it? Where's the tag? Where's the bucket? Where's your receipt?" He replied that he bought it three days ago and he didn't have the receipt anymore. I began to doubt myself. Then I imagined the IG, already suicidal and paranoid to a fault, poisoned by this upstanding customer of Sam Walton, foaming at the mouth and convulsing. I hesitated.
It's funny how criminals, or those who deal with criminals, are indignant when you call them on it. If you were to see one driving your car away, and confronted him, and took your car back, the bastard would have a way of making you question reality. "No, this isn't your car! It's MY car! I bought it at Walmart!" [Make sure when you read that, you sound wounded and indignant and wronged]. So, I started crying. "What am I going to do?" The guy looked sincerely worried. I cried some more. "All I want is a pretty garden." Oh boo hoo. The guy really looked uncomfortable.
"You can keep the tree," he announced munificently. He handed me a cutting for a Virginia creeper vine. "Here, just plant this. It will grow like crazy." I went home, got the cherry tree, some yum-yum mix, some homemade compost and the wheelbarrow. I wheeled the disputed tree back to the place I pulled it up from.
We planted the tree together and had a hug. I still really resent that asshole. I know that he didn't dig it up, but he bought it from some tweaker who did. The Nanking Cherry looks great in his yard. I bought another one at Plants of the Southwest that afternoon. Sunday of Divine Mercy.
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1 comment:
That was definitely divine mercy, I would probably not have done anything, but I guess you were right. I always try to avoid conflict, at-least immediate conflict.
I have had my own cherry-tree experience lately, it involved my (oversized) garden, lots of grass and some plow horses. needles to say, I think that your NANKING is better off than my Griotte, Horses love cherry bark, and quince for that matter. I did have a very nice man help me put fencing around my trees—one week later, the horses were gone!
I think that I'll plant new trees this fall.
By the way, there is another blog about martineztown, it has a large collection of photos of the UGLIEST places in ALBQ.
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