Fourteen years ago, we planted a three-gallon Japanese maple in the backyard as part of a new landscape project. At the time, it didn’t look like much. It was basically a skinny little tree in a plastic pot, surrounded by enough optimism on my part to make up for my questionable gardening skills. I remember digging the hole, putting the tree in the ground, watering it, and standing back with the satisfying feeling that we had just accomplished something important. We had, of course, accomplished something important. We just had no idea that the next fourteen years would involve quite so much staring at a tree.
The first few years were mostly about keeping the poor thing alive. We watered it, watched the soil, worried about the heat, worried about the cold, worried about too much water, worried about too little water, and generally behaved as though we had been entrusted with the care of a rare botanical specimen rather than a tree we had purchased at a garden center. Every new leaf was an event. Every leaf that turned brown was a personal tragedy. We became remarkably familiar with the tree’s appearance, which is another way of saying we spent far too much time looking at it.