Little Tree

I don't have a large garden but it's big enough to have a small tree near a corner. It's a Japanese Acer that starts off in spring with salmon pink leaves that gradually fade over a three week period into yellow/lime and finally a deeper and more conventional 'leaf green'.

At the moment it's on the turn and the spectacular pink will be but a memory. In this little window of time my tree blazes in all it's glory.

We bought the tree nearly twenty years ago not long after we moved here. At the same time a neighbour from our previous home died far too young. We didn't get the tree to commemorate John but I always think of him at this time.


The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
Their recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenest is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In full grown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

The Trees by Philip Larkin