On the Seventh Day of Christmas: Seven Japanese Maples

My mom and dad lived in a town home in Springfield, VA for the last three years of Dad’s life. In addition to other lovely amenities, a magnificent Japanese Maple grew out of the lower of their back double deck, it’s graceful trunk surpassing the railing of the upper deck, it’s branches and foliage spreading it’s mulit-colored shade over the whole space. My Dad cherished that tree.

Before he died, one of the samaras (aka “whirlybirds”) planted itself into one my mom’s plant pots, sprouted and grew for a few years. Eventually Mom gave the tree to me and we planted it after we moved into our new home. As is our tradition, we named the tree; Beverly is my mother’s middle name and that’s what we named that small Japanese Maple with a hope that she grow to be as beautiful as the tree from which she came. It was soon evident, however, that her growth was stunted from having been in that pot for so long. Even after being planted, she barely grew beyond a foot tall and her foliage amounted to two tiny leaves sticking out of the top of her stick-trunk.

Growth, however, was the least of Beverly’s problems. Our daughter Kelle, a sophomore in High School at the time, introduced Beverly to her crazy friends and all of them found great joy mocking the size and “produce” of the poor tree. Several times they covered her with toilet paper and other humiliations. When Christmas rolled around that year they hung various ornaments on her, and the weight bent her pencil-width form nearly to the ground. Those of us—mainly me—who cared did what we could to protect, rescue and encourage the poor, dwarfed tree, ever sad that she couldn’t reflect the glory of her species.

Before the Christmas break was over that year, Dillsburg experienced a blizzard, bringing all commerce and recreation to a screeching halt and burying residents under many feet of snow. Beverly, of course, disappeared beneath the thick blanket of snow that had fallen. We discovered when the snow began to melt that she had broken in half from the weight. We assumed that to be the end of the line of Japanese maples as we knew them. We were wrong. That following spring Beverly's new and sudden growth proved that she was very much alive. She began to produce many lovely leaves and, in short, blossomed. Today, though recently damaged by another storm, she’s taller than the house.

We’ve often wondered how Beverly survived all she did. Who knows? Maybe she got serious about life or perhaps she was brought back to life by Christmas magic. Or maybe her recovery was just a case of nature hauling over and pruning the poor thing.