When you make the wrong decision, it hurts
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- May 11, 2024
- 449
“Avoid sudden temperature fluctuations and protect the plant from hot and cold drafts, especially in winter.”
—bathgardencenter.com
Well, we’ve lost the Norfolk pine, and it’s all my fault.
After being in my care for more than 25 years, from the time it was a mere sapling until it stood 5 feet tall, proud and free, it’s dead.
And I’m just heartsick about it.
Faithful readers might recall I devoted a column to its failing health a couple of months ago and that I was determined to restore it to its former vigor but was worried it might already be too late.
When my wife and I made the life-altering choice to leave coastal Carolina late last year, we faced an immense amount of work and had only a limited time frame to accomplish all that was needed.
Priorities had to be established as we sifted through the accumulated stuff we’d amassed since leaving home at the turn of the century. Difficult decisions had to be made as the sands of the hourglass continued their inevitable, unavoidable disappearance.
She’s immensely more disciplined when it comes to jettisoning personal belongings; I mean she shows a merciless streak that I used to find alarming but now have gotten accustomed to, understanding she’s hard-wired to be ruthlessly efficient.
Clothing, furniture, camping equipment … nothing was spared.
She made daily trips to what was euphemistically known as a “recycling center,” a sad, horrid place that was actually a junkyard.
But on some level, I knew that, in time, I’d have to downsize too.
There’s a thin but discernible line between being a conscientious curator and a diseased hoarder, a careful collector and someone who refuses to part with his college notebooks, believing some day someone might want to examine a student’s ancient scribblings taken during a Faulkner seminar or his thoughts on Shakespeare’s use of allegory in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
So off they all went to the county dump, and I was pleased with myself for having gotten beyond my belief that once something’s gone, it’s lost forever and there’s simply no getting it back.
After I’d breached that barricade, I made steady progress, and as Christmas approached, I cheerfully agreed there was no reason to decorate the house beyond what was bare-bones necessary, understanding it made no sense to unpack seasonal treasures only to have to jam them back into their boxes prior to the move.
And that’s when the Norfolk pine made its last stand, serving as a substitute for the grand tree that had always dominated the sunroom, and even though it bore only a single strand of lights and a handful of random ornaments, it made us happy one more time.
You should understand it had been left on our doorstep by my sister many Christmas Eves before, a scraggly collection of drooping branches that made Charlie Brown’s misshapen, misfit tree seem like the one erected in Rockefeller Center every year.
But I felt an overpowering sense of being needed, the kind of responsibility that comes with adopting a puppy or being trusted with maintaining friends of the family’s rose garden for two months while they summered on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
“Water them early in the morning or late in the afternoon,” I was told. “Each drop is like a magnifying glass on leaves in sunlight.”
That was the same serious tone I detected when the man who was in charge of transporting our belongings back to Ohio talked to me about the advisability of including the Norfolk pine on the trip.
“I’d hate to leave it behind,” I said. “It’s almost like family.”
He pushed up the bill of his ball cap and scratched his beard.
“I understand that,” he said, “but I can’t guarantee what condition it’ll be in after being in the back of the truck for three days and two nights. It’ll be January, and we’re driving more than 700 miles.”
And that’s where I made my mistake.
Instead of thanking him for his sage advice and trying to find a new home for the Norfolk pine — or maybe just planting it in the backyard of the house we’d rented for 23 years — I told him directly to do his best to include it with the rest of our belongings.
I signed a waiver absolving him of any culpability should anything befall the tree between the time we left and the time we got home.
You know the rest of the story. Hindsight being what it is, I’ve beaten myself up regularly for insisting I get my way, even as I recognize the fact that I had only the best intentions at heart.
As its once-feathery and healthy fronds began to drop off with alarming frequency and temperatures in Northern Ohio stayed stubbornly below freezing, leaving me futilely seeking better sunlight as I watered it daily, the tree gradually gave up the fight.
Its green ceramic pot, now forlornly empty, sits in the garden where colorful flowers grow, flourishing in the spring sunshine, perhaps waiting for me to make a better decision next time around.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where every growing thing is tended to and appreciated.