Time to correct a mistake (8/17/05)

I dug the hole in the wrong place.

As Mother Nature has reminded me.

More than 20 years ago, we moved into our house in Portland.

That's a long time. Once, more than halfway around the globe in Kazakhstan, I mentioned to a retired New York Times correspondent and a former Associated Press honcho that I'd lived for more than 20 years in the same house my parents lived in when I was born. They pronounced me "un-American" based upon current trends of hyper-mobility.

At any rate, I dug the hole in the wrong place. It was 1981, as I recall.

We weren't moving very far, just down the street, in fact. And Connie's parents had given us a sapling of a birch tree, one called a Heritage Birch.

So, when we moved, it was easy enough to bring along.

I re-planted it, as little more than a switch, in the wrong place, probably two or three feet too close to the house.

We were reminded of its too-closeness about ten years ago, when it was big enough to start depositing leaves in the gutter.

To further complicate things, any birch is what's called a "trash tree" by the experts.

I doubted that term the first time I heard it — from Ken Ritter, son of Everett and Dorothy Ritter of Portland — but then he showed me how ash trees, Dutch elders, and certain others create a mess around their trunks. (His degree from Purdue and his background in natural resources probably played a role as well.)

But, once you plant a tree — even too close to the house — you're pretty much stuck. It took more flexibility than I could muster, so soon after digging the hole, to admit that I'd dug the darned thing in the wrong place.

Years passed. (Imagine one of those scenes in an old movie with calendar pages flying by and you'll get the right effect.)

And the tree grew.

Instead of being a whip or a sapling, it was suddenly more than a foot in diameter.

And it was beautiful. All birches are known for their interesting bark, but this one was extraordinary.

Then, last January, Mother Nature stepped in.

As might be expected, the birch tree too close to the house took a serious hit. We couldn't get out of our front door after the ice storm had passed. Too many limbs and branches blocked our way.

It wasn't the only tree on our lot to take a hit, of course.

Ashes, maples, pin oaks, red buds, ornamental pears took a real beating.

But when the trimming and chain-sawing was done, we thought the birch — a gift, mind you, from my wife's parents, who are now gone — was safe.

Not so.

On Sunday, road-weary and sunburned, we rolled into the driveway from vacation to find an August storm had taken off another huge branch, probably one weakened by the January storm.

There was no damage to the house, but the tree's days are numbered.

There seems no other choice but to take it down.

And plant a replacement.

In a better spot.[[In-content Ad]]