Bye tree, bye tree, my daughter says in that excited half shout, half-whisper that only toddlers seem to have mastered as we walk by the big old dogwood at the edge of our property.
Regal, yet a little crooked, beautiful, yet weathered, the dogwood creates a magical little bubble over a corner of the yard and the front porch. Its rambling branches extend so that when it blooms in the warmer months, it is nearly impossible to see whoever is sitting on the porch swing.
Hi, tree, my daughter happily says, patting the tree on its trunk when we return an hour later from our walk around the town. Tree is one of the first words she learned, and she started to understand the idea of senses by watching, touching and, yes, smelling the tree through the seasons.
In May of 2020, when the news was unbearable, the old dogwood seemed to ground me to the world around me, offering a little reassurance. You've seen some things, haven't you? I'd muse while pulling the weeds from the flower bed, and you're still here. In a world turned upside down, the tree was solid Earth. Saying hello and goodbye to the tree on our morning walks became a ritual. Occasionally, my daughter threw in a hug.
As spring progressed and Mother Nature put on her glorious show, the flowering tree provided a hands-on science lesson for my daughter. Watching her fall in love with the outdoors and start to understand that for as strong as the tree was, parts of it, like its white flowers, were delicate was pure joy. We'd sit under it in the afternoons, running our hands through the grass, looking for ladybugs and picking up the petals that fell. It was such a beautiful little bit of ordinary.
When summer hit, though, I noticed the tree wasn't looking like its usual self. Only half of its branches bloomed with flowers, and half of the trunk was crumbly, no longer tough enough to stand up to my tiny daughter's gentle pats. Pieces of its bark started to dot the flower petals that blanketed the ground like snow in summer.
I traded doomscrolling about viruses, germs living on packages and the best types of hand sanitizer for a toddler for tree diseases. I spent most of the summer of 2020 talking to anyone who would listen about my dogwood and asking questions about how to save it.
All the while, our daily walks with a bye and hi continued.
Arborist after arborist came, each proclaiming about the tree's size saying it was at least a 100 years old. Saying it had been years since they saw one this big and this old. In recent decades, much of New England has seen a decline in flowering dogwoods due to environmental stresses such as the changing climate and the increases in fungal infections, extreme weather, and insects the climate crisis is bringing. Yours is an outlier, I was told. Most dogwoods no longer die of old age in this part of the country. That knowledge, which I think was supposed to be comforting, made me sadder for the tree.
We had estimates to have it cut down and removed, but we weren't ready to say goodbye yet; the tree stayed; it stood firm through a few more winter storms. Even as more of its bark fell off, its snow-covered and icicle branches provided new things for my daughter to awe at.
Finally, though, in the spring of 2021, we stood outside and said bye tree for the last time. We talked about how trees get old, of the happiness it gave and of death. A few weeks later we planted a Cherry Blossom tree a few yards away and talked about new beginnings.
These days my daughter no longer says hi and bye to the trees in the yard but she does check on how the Cheery Blossom and the other new trees: two crab apples are growing.
~ Bridget
How to use a tree to begin inspiring a love for and understanding of nature
Pick a tree in your yard, a favorite park or on a walk.
Have your child name the tree.
If the tree is in your yard or at a park, set up a blanket under it for reading or playing, make it home base in kickball or make it a meeting point. You want to find something that makes it a part of your child's everyday life.
Once a week, have your child touch it, listen to the sounds around it, smell it.
Use these weekly check-ins to start talking about the practical part of trees: do any animals live in them? Does the air smell cleaner by the tree? What is the ground like near the tree? Can you see the roots?
These questions can be jumping-off points to talk about the habitats trees provide or how they help clean the air, keep the soil from eroding and more.
Need some help figuring out what to talk to about the tree? Use an app like LeafSnap or PlantNet Plant Identification to identify it.
Reading: I spent a lot of time researching grey water and what to do with it last winter, and as such, I loved this look at it by Shea Swenson, "Why Has Agriculture Been So Slow to Embrace the Use of Grey Water?” in Modern Farmer. We're spending the summer not far from Beatrix Potter's original home and I've started reading Linda Lear's biography A Life in Nature. I've also been browsing BOSH! on a Budget, which I'm covering for Martha Stewart Living. It's full of easy, simple, comforting vegan recipes I'll be making this winter.
Working: On a piece about urban gardens for Modern Farmer and an interview with the guys behind BOSH! for Martha Stewart Living.
Published: A guide to my hometown for The Day Magazine.