I am not generally what one would regard as a tree hugger.  The first time I noticed an outbreak of tree hugging in my personal history happened in 1990 or so when Bill and I were selling our first house in Bellevue.  It was a house he had purchased and landscaped with his first wife, Lynn who had died several years earlier.  The real estate agent who came to look over the property pronounced that the weeping cedar in the front yard was planted too close to the house and it had to go.

As I said, I had no part in either the original purchase or location of that particular tree, but I loved it. And when Bill took the real estate agent at her word about having the tree removed, he and I had … well … words about it. Eventually the vote was two to one, and I lost.  The tree went. I’m someone who does carry a grudge, apparently, and I finally got over that arboreal loss (I know a five dollar word, but that’s the only available adjective allowed to describe tree like) this last summer when we FINALLY planted a weeping cedar in the front yard our current house in Bellevue.  Trust me, it is across the driveway from the house.  No real estate agent in his or her right mind is going to pronounce it “too close”—not on my watch!

In 2001 we bought the house in Tucson.  It was built in the early fifties and came with plenty of tree issues of it’s own—including a palm tree that was planted so close to the house that it was actually damaging the roof.  We didn’t cut that one down—we moved it.  At the time we dug it up and had a crane on hand to move it—it weighed 12,500 pounds—right at the weight limit for the crane.  I started to say that the tree was enormous when we moved it, and 12,500 pounds sounds big, but it is so much happier in its new spot in the middle of the front yard, that it has actually doubled in size.  Now it is enormous!

In the back hard we had a 75 foot tall palo verde that was right outside the kitchen window.  That one was actually rotten from the inside out.  If you’ve ever met the daunting looking creatures called palo verde beetles, you would understand how that could happen.  Afraid that the next big windstorm might take it down, we had it removed, and I can tell you, watching that happen was a nail-biting procedure.

Our back yard is shaded in part by a grove of native Arizona palm trees.  We keep them skirted as opposed to trimmed because the skirts provide far more shade than the bare trunks would.  The skirts also allow for a huge amount of habitat for birds and bats.

Backyard shade is also provided by two huge African sumac—aka rhus lancea.  They were imported from Africa in the thirties and forties due to their ability to withstand the climate and to provide lush shade.  I’m sure the two we have now were planted around the time the house was built. Both of them lost major branches this winter during unusually heavy winter rainstorms.  (Yes, one branch fell on the roof of the house, but thankfully it did no damage.)

Our old trees are grandfathered in, however, it is no longer legal to plant those trees around here because they are considered to be “messy.” They have little green flowers that fall off the trees and cover the landscape with a layer of something that bears an uncommon resemblance to green snow. It’s my personal opinion that the African sumac are getting a bum rap here—maybe because they might be considered to be “refugee trees.”  If you’ve ever had a blooming palo verde planted anywhere near a swimming pool, I can tell you THOSE are messy, and I haven’t heard anyone recommending that we outlaw THEM.

So as I’m sitting here, with the patio pleasantly shaded by my illegal trees and with only a sprinkling of little green flowers, I say, “Unhand my rhus lancea, sir.  Let them thrive.

And then there’s the olive tree out front next to the garage.  It’s obviously at least a seventy-year old tree, and guess what? It’s also “messy” and “illegal.” In other words, I couldn’t plant another one just like it even if I wanted to because too many people are allergic to the pollen from the blooms.  The only olive trees it is currently legal to plant are ones with NO OLIVES!    (By the way, people are also allergic to palo verde blooms, but as I mentioned in the paragraph above, they are not outlawed.)

The “messy” part of those now illegal  olive trees is that they grow … well …olives, fruit that falls of the branches and spatters on the ground below.

Years ago, before El Con Mall cracked down on their Dumpsters and before a red-tailed hawk took up residence in the neighborhood, we used to have a lot more pigeons—rock dove as they are called around here.  (Talk about being messy!  Someone should outlaw THEM!!)

One summer while we were gone, an injured pigeon took shelter on our back porch.  He couldn’t fly, but he could hop around to the front yard and eat olives to his heart’s content.  And he could also hop up on the edge of the fountain and drink to his heart’s content as well.  When he did at last sail off to his everlasting home in the endless sky, he left behind indelible tracings of his residency here.  It took years for the last of those purple stains to disappear.

Let’s be clear: illegal olive trees have olives.  Last year, when I was out walking (Sorry, there’s that walking thing again!) I practiced balance by picking a path through the fallen olives on the driveway pavers because I didn’t want to track purple stains inside the house.  This year that has changed.  There are far fewer fallen olives this year, not because there are fewer olives on the tree but because a whole crew of birds has settled in there among the branches and are eating olives like crazy.  What ends up on the ground is mostly olive pits and a few partially eaten olives.  I don’t know exactly what kind of birds these are.  I hear them rather than see them, but I know they’re there.

So if my renegade olive tree has been there for seventy some years and the birds have just now figured out that olives are good to eat, then you really can teach old birds new tricks. In the process, they’re also making my messy tree far less messy.

All of which brings me to one final conclusion: I guess I really am a tree hugger after all.