An act of will

To grow a tree, when and where it’s wanted, is an act of will.

Volunteer trees don’t count. They root in the most inconvenient places — flowerbeds, building foundations, quarter-inch cracks in the sidewalk. But to nurture a stand of trees, deliberately placed, is to pit oneself against the granite face of nature.

A battle like that requires a person like my mother. She succeeded at it, long before weed barrier strips and drip irrigation were common practice.

The vertical reach attained by trees my mother has willed to maturity eclipses her 5-foot frame by a factor of 100. Photographs from the early 1950s show our farmstead as a barn and a house rising up from a barren yard. No shelter belt, no shade trees to speak of, nothing to baffle the wind or mottle the sunshine.

Then my mother arrived. She planted, weeded, watered and willed. I can still see her with her spade, turning up ground at the base of the cedar trees west of our house. She encircled the seedlings with reclaimed tractor or car tires for protection.

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