"Floral Requiem"

She said to us, "If you take care of these baby trees, they will grow up to be big, strong, healthy trees, and they'll last for hundreds of years." I was so excited about the concept of something that I would plant lasting for hundreds of years. I forced my father to help me plant all five in the front yard. In front of our house, there was a small cluster of densely packed trees that I would play in (a mini-forest, if you will). I planted them at the edge of the "forest" overlooking the street (my house was on a slight hill above the road).

I went almost every day to check on them, and a few months later, another teacher had us look after a small garden planted in the classroom in an old aquarium near the window. She told us that plants are more likely to survive if you sing to them. It all seems so silly now, but as soon as I found out this amazing scientific fact, I not only went out to check on my trees often, I would sing to them.

So there I was, a little six-year-old boy, crouched down a couple times a week singing to these baby pines. I was nervous, because I knew a colony of fire ants lived on the hill near where the trees were planted. They had stung my sister pretty bad once, and I certainly didn't want to be stung. I swallowed my fear, though. My baby trees needed me to sing to them. A few of them even began to die, so I fervently sang to those trees especially.

Time passed, and my interest in my trees waned slightly. I would look at them from the car when my mother and I went places, but I didn't go check on them as much or sing to them anymore. However, the trees all thrived, even the ones that had been dying. I knew that almost all the other kids in my class had most, if not all, of their trees die on them. I was quite proud of the fact that my good care and singing helped my trees thrive.

A year after the trees were planted, my father was transferred to New Brunswick, and while we returned to Nova Scota two years after that, I lived closer to town than I did to my old house, so I never went back to check on them.

Even when we moved to Highland Park, just five minutes away from the old house, I never really bothered to drag myself down there to check on them. However, my mother swung by shortly after we moved into this house, and informed me that my trees were still there, and not only had they survived, they were thriving and enormous. I felt really great about this. Still, though, I never went to see them myself.

I had some time to kill today, so I decided to finally make that trip and see those trees I had so devoted myself to as a child. I marvelled at how familiar the old neighbourhood was as I approached the old house. However, as it slowly came into sight, it became aware to me that something was desperately wrong.

At first, I thought it was the awful green colour the house had been repainted that was troubling me. Then I realized that I shouldn't be able to see the house from the street at all. The mini-forest blocked the view of the house from the street.

The truth hit me like a sock full of pennies.

The mini-forest, and my pine trees, were gone. The entire thing had been clearcut, the stumps removed, and the hill covered with mulch. Judging by the look of the hill, it had been done relatively recently, too.

A "For Sale" sign was stabbed into the ground near the end of the driveway. The reasoning behind the "deforestation" was obvious: You can't sell a house easily if prospective buyers cannot see it from the street.

They chopped down my pine trees to increase their chances of making more money off the sale of their house. Once again, in the battle of nature vs. money, nature lost and money won. Even singing cannot saved trees doomed for profit.