The maple in the backyard of the house I grew up in is now gigantic, with power lines snaking through it. My parents bought that house in Montréal in the mid-’60s. When I was about 6, my parents and the family next door, where my boyhood friend lived, both decided to plant a maple tree. Canada, eh?
For some reason, the neighbor’s tree grew much better than ours. They also nurtured it, trimmed the branches that weren’t doing well, and kept a solid trunk. Ours grew wild because trees and gardening weren’t really my father’s forte.
Our tree worked well. Eventually, it covered about three-quarters of the yard, shading the above-ground pool we installed later and my bedroom window. We had no air conditioning, and contrary to what people think, it does get warm up there in July and stays humid through the dog days of August, so that shade was worth having.
We hung a swing from the tree. I climbed it, swung on the branches, and at the parties I hosted as a teenager, I jumped into the pool from it. I believe I even ran the wire for my crystal radio out to one of the branches. I spent many falls raking those leaves, and then raked them again in the spring because, for some reason, our tree kept many of its leaves through the winter, which a maple isn’t supposed to do.
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Paul wrote that in his first letter to the church in Corinth, where they argued over which of their teachers deserved the credit. He adds, “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” The family next door watered. Ours was planted and left alone.
The last time I saw their tree, a few years ago, it was even larger. If you were an arborist, you’d say it was well cared for, with a straight, thick trunk and a perfectly shaped top. Ours splits into three or four low down, scarred where limbs were cut to keep them from growing over the pool and into the wiring. Many summers, it also had caterpillars, the kind that build silk nests and have to be cut out. More than 50 years later, ours is huge anyway.
It’s a girl! Baby giraffe born at Brevard Zoo
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It’s a girl! “Gail” is almost 6-foot-tall, 119-pounds, and born to 12-year-old mother, Kumi, and 6-year-old father, Mapenzi at Brevard Zoo. (provided by Brevard Zoo)
My parents moved out nearly 15 years ago, long after I left home in 1986, and I still go back every few years to check on the place. The cedar hedge we put in along the side of the house must be half a football field long, and it’s wider and taller. So is the maple.
I never met the people who live there now. The pool is gone (we took it down ourselves), but the greenery remains. On a summer afternoon, the new owners may sit out back under a tree my parents planted decades ago. They don’t know any of the story I just told you. That’s all right. I had my turn under it, and the caterpillars are somebody else’s problem now.
Scott Tilley is the founder of CTS Ministries and an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. You’ll be able to find this column, Spirituality Today, every Sunday at floridatoday.com. Contact Tilley at stilley@cts.today.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Lessons learned from a backyard maple tree in Canada | Spirituality Today
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