Think Only God Can Make a Tree?

Pretty sure the Devil made this one

Image by Airgil Daviss from Pixabay

The river birch tree we planted in our yard fifteen years ago has grown beyond our wildest dreams.

It’s a nightmare.

My husband and I remember when it was a lovely, innocent-looking spire just out of its sapling stage. We chose it out of all the other river birches at the tree nursery. We awaited its delivery like anxious parents, and watched with bated breath as it was installed in our yard. We supported it with ties and sturdy stakes. We provided it with a special watering system dedicated solely to its nurturance. 

Now it towers over our house’s steeply pitched roof. It’s far larger than any other river birch in the neighborhood, even the ones that have been around longer.

And it’s trying to kill us.

Its efforts are indirect and stealthy, but no less murderous than if it came after us with a chainsaw.

We ignored the early signs. For years, once the river birch was fully established and flourishing, we marveled at the vigor of its roots, blaming ourselves for our clumsiness when those roots configured themselves into ideally positioned trip hazards.

In its teenage phase, the river birch repeatedly attempted, especially on dark winter mornings when I was outside with the dog, to blind me with its lower branches. It very nearly succeeded.

I thought it was just, you know, trees being trees.

Every fall, it releases its increasingly heavy crop of spent leaves in perversely timed batches. It delights in dumping another load the night after we’ve spent a day raking and bagging — especially on nights when it rains or snows.

If it can’t break our necks by tripping us, it can at least give us back spasms while we scoop up its cold, cast-off, sodden foliage.

And there’s something about those leaves that gum up our gutters more savagely than any other detritus that finds its way onto our roof.

At one point several years ago, the river birch split into not just two trunks, but two almost separate trees, one of which threatened at any moment to depart from its shared base and crash into our house.

It cost I-forget-how-much to have an arborist service come out and surgically bolt the trunks together, thus re-conjoining the sinister twins.

We assumed trees are nice. Benevolent. Patient, enduring sentinels, placid and uncomplaining, lovelier than any poem you think you shall ever see. 

My husband and I love trees. We’ve planted dozens of them in our time together, and admired and cherished many, many more.

This one is a demon. We suspect it’s possessed, possibly by the vengeful spirit of a desperado from our locale’s Wild West days, long buried in unhallowed ground.

Consider the roots of its evil: they have spread far and wide, as expected of any large tree. But these woody serpents have extended their reach past all that could be considered reasonable, covering a distance that significantly outstrips the tree’s canopy.

And they’re moving faster than you’d think was possible.

The tree’s fiendish plot was revealed this spring when our sprinklers were turned back on. We live in a development with recent agricultural history, and a perk is that we get irrigation water from one of the seasonal canals fed by our nearby river.

All the sprinklers had worked perfectly, right up until the irrigation was shut off last fall. But now, only a few of our sprinkler heads manage a feeble spray. What can have happened in five months?

The tree may be crafty in its villainy, but it lacks ears. Thus it has left an unwitting clue: a distinct whooshing sound, just underground, right where several of our yard’s irrigation pipes connect to their valves.

With arduous digging, my husband unearthed the evidence. The river birch’s roots spent the winter, when all decent trees are dormant, surrounding and strangling our water pipes with the relentless determination of a gang of slow-motion pythons. 

Remember, we’ve given the tree its own water supply. Now it seems intent on keeping every drop of hydration to itself, the rest of the yard be damned.

If the river birch isn’t haunted, it’s for sure a Republican.

For a long week, my husband has gone after the obstructing roots with every cutting and chiseling tool at his disposal, performing what amounts to multiple bypass surgeries. I have stood by, helpless to do much besides offer sympathy as he battled twisting growths the size of my calves.

But I’ve picked up a few new and creative combinations of expletives.

Just when he’d freed one system of pipes, another knot of irrigation-throttling roots revealed itself further along the line. This requires more trenching, cutting, and chiseling.

One of the root’s resemblance to a human hand, mercilessly squeezing a couple of pipes, is too eerily precise to be an accident.

Malevolent, right? Photo by author's creeped-out husband

Tell me that’s not evil incarnate.

As I write, the battle continues. It’s taking a toll on my husband’s knees, back, hands, body in general, and perspective on life. Worse, his most recent excavations confirm that the river birch is upping its lethal scheme.

Its roots are heading toward the foundations of our house. I can sense its slow, inexorable mind churning as it plots the day when, in one late-night, horrific, vegetal heave, it will upend our home and send it crashing to ruin.

With us inside.

That’s not going to happen, tree. You may have weight, strength, and poets on your side, but we have opposable thumbs. 

And real chainsaws.