Lee Scott
aqWhen we moved here five years ago, there was a sad little stick tree in the front yard. I kept asking my husband to chop it down. It seriously looked like some limb had snapped off a larger tree and was embedded into our lawn.
He continued to say, “No,” each time I suggested it. He was steadfast in his conviction that we should leave the little stick tree alone, and so I started to call it the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. You may recall the old Charlie Brown Christmas show that addressed the true meaning of Christmas and featured the poor little sad tree that Charlie Brown brought to his friends for the Christmas Pageant. The little sapling was the only real tree on the lot and was losing its pine needles, but Charlie Brown wanted it.
So, my Charlie Brown — as I started calling my spouse — carefully mowed around it, though I felt that one good push with the lawn mower might have been better. Even Hurricane Matthew, which took out a bunch of our trees, did not hurt our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It not only survived, it thrived.
One day one of our local arborists was walking by so I asked her what kind of tree it was. To my surprise she said, “Oh, that is a beautiful Dogwood tree.”
“Good Lord, Charlie Brown!,” I said as my spouse laughed and gave me that, “I told you so,” smirk, even though he had no idea it was a Dogwood tree, either.
