The Trees Take Care of Themselves

The lawn in the front of his home was something Homer MacEwan felt good about. He was proud. It wasn't a large or spectacular thing, this yard, but he worked it and kept it even and green and good. He kept tulips and a few shrubs, and had somehow managed to protect them from the hordes of invading neighborhood rabbits. There was a path of square mosaic tiles that serpentined its way from one side of the yard to the other. Everything had been planted or placed there by him, save a single tree. It had been there as a younger version when he bought the house, many years ago. And over those years it grew, without attention, and still stood healthy, and bloomed every spring.

He called it the Purple Tree, for lack of a better name. It had purple flowers on its branches that dissipated down the trunk. Homer didn't know specifically what kind of tree it was, or what these flowers were, and he liked to keep it that way, to keep it in mystery. The tree had no other foliage except for these small purple flowers that popped against the street's more common wood. He would sit on his porch with a good book and a drink of some kind, and read, and drink, and would get sucked in by this thing in magenta. It was a tree that caught people's eyes as they passed, and he enjoyed hearing the odd remark of approval.

He was looking at the tree that afternoon and saw a bumblebee, hovering around its blossoms. This fat fuzzy thing making love to these small and delicate flowers. There wasn't so much difference between that and us, he thought, or an orchid that deceives a bee into pollinating, into making it think the orchid is something it's not. He could relate, Homer nodded to himself, and he doubted that there would be any man alive who could speak to the contrary.

Homer's neighbor, Luke, stepped out of his house. He was a younger man, and didn't remind Homer much of what he was like as a man of that age. Luke snuck around the side of his house and returned with his green garden hose. He stretched its length out to the patch of grass beyond the sidewalk. There, in the short width of the patch that measured his house, he recently had a sapling installed, and around each young tree was a gathering of grey oval stones. Luke then proceeded to squeeze the trigger of the nozzle and release water, and water, and more water, onto these piles of stones.

Homer studied this action before asking him what he was doing. "Just watering my tree. Got to keep them watered, help them grow, especially while they're young." Homer couldn't make sense of it. He had a tree, a beautiful tree, and he hadn't touched the thing in decades, he hadn't touched it at all. But there it was, every year, beautiful. He mowed and planted and watered and was a good caregiver. But why give this kind of love to a tree, when they do so well on their own? The trees take care of themselves, he thought. Who was he to interfere? No, he would let nature run its course.

The old man pulled his gaze away from his young neighbor and focused it on his own tree. He searched for the bumblebee, but it was gone. The tree had gotten what it wanted. It was doing just fine. It was still standing. It didn't need him.

He took his cup of water, wanting to finish it, but as he brought it to his lips he noticed in it a few flecks of nature's debris. He inverted the drink onto his porch, splashing his shoes. Homer then made his way to the door, he didn't want to read anymore, not outside, not like this. And when he opened that front door he noticed a fresh spiderweb in the corner, and for all the strength that's said to be found in spider's silk it was impossibly easy to destroy.