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A legacy of sorts
One weekend when I was in my early teens my father asked me to climb onto our garage and clean out the gutters. After the requisite stalling and complaining I clambered up there with trowel and pail and got to what I then considered work: three minutes of toil followed by fifteen minutes of idle, sulking rumination, repeat ad libitum.
The gutters had about an inch of decomposing leaf mold in them, carpeted with the samaras — winged seeds — of a nearby silver maple. At the far corner of the garage a couple dozen of the seeds had sprouted, rooted out in the gutter, sent up leaves.
I pulled the baby trees roughly out of their nursery, considered the three largest ones. They were a good four or five inches tall. The gutters half-cleaned, I climbed down, found a shovel, planted the three largest seedlings between the sidewalk and the side of our house, along Forest Avenue.
This weekend Dad and my brother Craig were driving past the old house, and Craig took this photo.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
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