yes, there is a gardener...but he's not very good

Yes, I am the not so very good gardener. I'm aware that God loves a garden, and he created a garden and I am made in his image. However, I am a distracted gardener. One of the first things I planted when we moved to Indiana was two weeping willow trees. MKH found them at Lowe's for $10 and they were planted before we were completely unpacked.

I have been laughed at and ridiculed for planting two weeping willows because, as it is said, "they are messy trees" "they have invasive roots" and on and on the iron-clad logic goes. But, I like weeping willow trees and this may be my last garden so I'm going to have a weeping willow.

One of the weeping willows refuses to weep. We call it the "happy willow" because it's branches reach straight out and up to the sky and wave in the breezes and "clap their hands," as it were. That's okay with us.

Last year the weeping willow developed a big knot in its trunk about three feet from the ground. Now if I had been a good gardener I would have checked this out right away but I didn't. I didn't tend to my garden. I just speculated from a distance that this was a graft, it was an imperfection, it was....whatever..., what can you expect for $10 bucks from Lowe's. The tree was growing like crazy and looked great so I didn't worry about it.

The weeping willow started growing a great big limb just underneath this knot in the trunk and still I didn't inspect the tree. I just took my limb loppers out and lopped off the new big limb. This new section of the tree was quite big, maybe a fourth the size of the rest of the tree.

This spring the weeping willow has acted quite sick, the leaves have turned yellow, the leaves have been falling like it was ...well...fall. Finally I went out and took a look. Early in the weeping willow's life it's root system wasn't developed enough to withstand the strong breezes in our back yard so I put a stake in the ground and tied a string around the tree and onto the stake. The string had not allowed for rapid growth and was strangling the tree. The big knot was the tree trunk trying to grow up and past the string. The big branch that I cut off was the tree trying to go around the string. It wanted to grow but because I am a poor gardener it couldn't.

So now I've taken cuttings (little branches) off the weeping willow and put them in an old Folgers can to develop some roots. Once the cuttings developed roots (adventitious little suckers...literally) I took one of the cuttings outside and planted it right beside the original weeping willow. It seems to be doing fine so far. I'll let them stay there side by side until I see if the cutting is going to take.

Meanwhile the happy willow is as happy as ever. I wonder if I tied a string real tight around it's trunk if it would start weeping?

The lesson I learned is this: Take five lousy minutes to really look at something that doesn't seem right. This is true of weeping willows and everything else in the garden, also cars, motorcycles, kids, wives, employers, employees, etc. etc. You might save yourself a lot of tears.