Iris Underwood: The golden season 

My affection for trees is rooted in what my mother named “the homeplace.” For a large tree shaded the two-story home of my earliest memories, nestled in what locals called Peter Creek’s McCoy Bottom. 

So named by its owners and the location at the bottom of two runoffs, or driveways, from the road, one at each end of the bottom. 

Between the homeplace, at one end of the bottom, and the other, stood the barn, a rather mammoth, spooky structure where bats flew from the haymow hatches. 

I’d run past the barn so bats wouldn’t land on my head. For Mom had told the story of bats tangled in her hair when she was a girl. 

Well, enough bats. What’s foremost on my mind at this moment is the coloring of trees come October. 

The mountains turned golden and crimson, bathed me in their earthy scent. 

Then, one day, Dad drove our family of five up the runoff in front of our house and onto the road. He drove for hours. 

The mountains disappeared. 

He drove through one little town after another, and an insufferably long road through a boring, flat state named Ohio with endless cornfields.

Eventually, we entered a city with long streets and houses on each side. Dad named the city Detroit.

Lo, and behold! Almost every house had a tree growing in front of it. 

All was not lost! Especially since a beautiful, flowering tree grew in the backyard of the house my parents rented.

Since the tree grew smaller than the other trees, Mom granted me permission to climb it.  

Then fall came. The leaves turned color. 

No, not as spectacular as the mountains. Yet, I could climb and hide in the tree until the leaves fell.

When my parents bought our own little house in Warren, Dad planted a maple tree on the little patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk, just like people did their trees in Detroit.

Then, Dad planted a tree in the backyard by the house to shade our bedrooms. I remember insufferably hot, summer nights, particularly when sunburned from a day’s play in the sun.

That little tree couldn’t grow as fast as my sisters and me to shade us adequately. 

Little did I know then the hunger for shade trees that grew within my spirit. 

Decades later, married with one grown daughter off to college and two still in school, my husband and I found desirable farmland for sale. 

Entirely treeless.

Yet, the location and price were right. 

We built our little Cape Cod, planted a crab apple tree in the front yard.

My father brought us a maple tree sapling for the backyard, which my husband planted.

One Spring, my husband said, “I found a place out west that ships trees. There’s one tree named Dawn Redwood, which grows quite tall and wide. Shall we try it?”

The shipment arrived. We rented a posthole digger, and planted the last of three Dawn Redwood saplings in the rain as the sun set. 

Dear Reader, again, predictable and welcome, the golden season of canopies and tunnels approaches. 

I heard my late husband say after he mowed our lawn, “Why did you plant so many trees?”

Again, I answer, “Why did you order so many trees?”