The seeds from our backyard cottonwood tree were coming down again, and my children were asking if they could go outside and play in the snow. The five-year-old who lives two buildings down had gathered up a small pile of fluffy white seeds and was collecting them into balls and throwing them straight up into the air.
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We hadn’t thought about it that way. We saw it as a home for the squirrels. We spotted a possum up near the top one evening. Raccoons would hold meetings at its base after they raided the garbage cans nearby. And when the wind would blow just right, the rustle of leaves and branches brought a symphony through our open windows.
Our neighbor began raking the seeds up. We told her we hadn’t planned to tear down the tree. After all, it was there before any of us. Our house is more than 100 years old, and we found a diary hidden under some wood when we moved a wall. In it the first owners wrote how big the tree was when they first built the house, first cultivated the garden, first formed the stone path we later unearthed as we began to form our own garden.
Our dog chased a seed around the living room, and our children gathered fallen branches to shake more seeds loose.
