by Ketzel Levine
Her nickname was ‘ Lacebark ’ and she was a endure mosaic , put together together from alabaster , ivory , amber , and jade . You get it on the type , with cheek that put the glowing of the moon to pity . I ’d never meet anyone like her , and probably never would have , had I not glanced through the Personals in the backof The Int’l Tree HuggersMagazine :
Arboreal Dish seek Connoisseur
Graceful , slender & long - legged , motherof pearl complexion w/ startling short drab hairsbreadth , i. s. o. stable , sunshine - loving gardener who consider good thing come to those who look .
Your place or mine ?
She was definitely not my type – I ’m not what you ’d call stable – but she seemed like a nice girl , so I throw her a call . Turns out she ’d had a unsound time of it : one among many in a vast family , sort of lost among the pines ; decelerate to develop physically and you know how hard on a sister that can be ; always kind of comely but not so ’s you ’d notice and for a long time nobody did ; a late bloomer professionally – turn out she loved to act – but always turn over over for the choicer use .
Part of the luggage , she says , of being evergreen .
I tell her I had some contacts in the plant world , and suggest she send me her photo . I did n’t want to brag , but I know my manner around this forest , and was certain I could shake down a few trees . As sure as ten dime will buy you a dollar , the pix proved her good as her word . Fact is , Lacebark seemed just a little too good to be true .
I call for to see her in the flesh .
I finagled an invitation for tea . She lived in what seemed like a Chinese synagogue garden ; turn out , it was a shell - sizing replica of her ancestors ’ hallowed home . Her relative had lived outside Peking for century before the tell outcome of 1831 , when a visiting Russian botanist advert von Bunge laid optic on the aged , deoxyephedrine - barked fellowship and told one too many friend .
Invitations from abroad oversupply in . Who could refuse ? The category dispersed via England with the help of a guy rope key out Fortune ( man , was he ever on a roll ) . Lacebark ’s branch hit these shores in 1879 . They were the pledge of the townspeople – exotic Asian émigrés were big news those days – but here we are , several generations later , and nobody have intercourse her name .
watch her lustrous dark needle , her airy grace and her luminescent body ( molded by time into patterns and patches that shift hues with the setting sun ) , I could n’t believe she ’d ever been ordinary . The dame was positively surreal . Her sweetheart was easily equal to that of the fabled , mahogany - skinned Maple – I knew her as Paperbark – but more startling because of the package she was twine in Evergreen . I wanted her . Badly . And I knew I could never have her . Lacebark outclass me by a mil . I envied the landscape that would be transformed by her presence ; just by looking at her , I could tell she ’d only get more beautiful with time .
I go away her with the hope to severalize her news report so that she might find what she longed for so dearly : way to take a breather and time to grow . Not much , all narrate . As I drove away , my heart capture , my rationality under beleaguering , I resolve to hold tight to my hope . Tight as barque on a tree .
Ketzel
Levine is National Public Radio ’s gardening expert , The Doyenne Of Dirt .
This clause is excerpt from her first book , Plant This ! , coming shortly from Sasquatch Books
