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Illustration by Drew Shannon
We have to take down our tree – a beautiful old trooper of an elm, a rare bird in itself since elms pretty much died off where I live from Dutch Elm Disease.
But we have one. It’s gigantic. I suspect it’s between 100 and 150 years old, not that I would know. It is four feet in diameter and its trunk extends straight up about a storey-and-a-half, where it splits into five more trunks – branches, really, but they are as big as trunks – rather like a spread hand at the end of a defiant, upraised, arm. Those branches have caused much anxiety over our 12 years in our house when thunderstorms and icestorms and high-wind-warnings were announced, and even more anxiety when the storms arrived, causing the tree to toss its canopy around like a madwoman dancing on a moor. Ten years ago, the tree dropped a massive branch in our neighbours’ yard, fortunately not killing anyone or doing any damage (they had not yet added their extension to their house; that branch would have made short work of that). One of the arms of the tree was “cabled” to another one of its arms, which we would rely on for security as the tree flung itself about, or as ice built up on it, or as it shed bits of itself all over the yard. But our arborists (who knew we’d ever have a life where we’d have arborists) came and vaccinated it, and trimmed it and nobody ever said, “that tree has got to be taken down.”
Until a few weeks ago. A couple of days after a windstorm of no great significance, there was another big drop. With a sound that was part car crash and part banshee’s groan, one of the tree’s limbs split off from its main trunk, more than a storey above the earth. By some great miracle it didn’t hit anything material (you have no idea just how miraculous this is – it was a huge limb). The tree’s “exfoliation event” (that’s what the arborist called it – an exfoliation, like the tree had been to the spa) failed to hit one neighbours’ garage, another’s backyard playhouse, another’s apple tree, another’s two-storey storage shed, and even another’s vintage Porsche. It was like she was saying, you know, I could squish you. All of you. Your houses, your cars, your children. I Am Tree.
We were able to get a tree service in quickly to remove the branches and clean it all up, at the alarming cost of more than five grand. But they did a great job. It did, however, turn out that it was time for the tree to be taken down. This has created a whole new learning curve for us. In Toronto, the urban forest is fiercely protected by an understaffed department called Tree Protection Services, from whom we have to get a permit.
This means an arborist’s report, an application/permit fee, an inspection, and then a tree replacement fee. Then, a couple of months later, the City will issue the permit, and only then will the work start. It will take two days with a five-person crew to take this beautiful creature down. We are advised this will involve a “mini-crane,” which weighs 16,000 pounds. And that’s the mini version.
So, this was the last summer of our beautiful elm. We have multiple other trees flanking both sides of our yard, but they are maples, and yeah, we love maples but they’re not this elm. We keep looking out in the yard and thinking, “It’ll be okay, we’ll get used to it being gone,” but the fact is we won’t have shade in at least half of the yard any more. Instead of the magnificent, moving, living, bird-filled greenery sprawling against the sky, we’ll just have … well, sky. Sky is wonderful but sometimes it’s damned hot under the open sky. The temperature in our yard is often 10 degrees cooler than out on the street, with that elm shading us. Oh, well. At least we’ll be able to buy something other than “shade plants” for the garden. And maybe we’ll buy a little fountain or something. We’re trying to think positive.
On the day that they come to take her away, I intend to go and put my arms around her, as far as they will go, and thank her for her life with us, and for her spirit, and for her generosity in not crushing my neighbour’s Porsche. I will send her spirit into a world where all the other elms are standing waiting for her: a heaven of trees. A forest that is not urban, but celestial. She will go there, and grow there, without being confined by fencing, or threatened with disease, or sliced with saws. And one day, when all is said and done for me, I will sit beneath her once more, my beautiful old tree.
Diane Baker Mason lives in Toronto.