The Bay Tree

 

               About twenty years ago, when my friend Maureen and I organized organic garden tours for Northwest Earth Institute fund-raising, I bought a bay “tree”. It was about a foot tall; I planted it in a pretty terra-cotta pot and it lived on the front porch, protected from the cold. I picked a leaf or two from it occasionally.  After about five years, we moved it into a wine barrel in the side yard and wrapped it when the temps went below about 25 degrees.  It was a bush.  I nipped leaves for cooking beans and gave it some grey water in the summer.

                When it broke through the barrel, it began to Grow. We stopped watering it in the summer but that did not slow it down. Six feet tall and wide….eight feet tall and wide…I climbed on a ladder and gave it a hard prune and gave away some trimmings. It grew. I pruned it again. Everyone I knew took branches away for their own kitchens.  It grew. I took off half of the tree—it came back with an impressive burst of new growth. It reached into the columnar apple and the tea bush planted (also in barrels) on either side.  The grape vine has sent out feelers to tangle in its branches, creating a bit of a foliar arch into the back yard.  Last year, I trimmed it out of the path to the back yard and stepped out of the way.

                This winter, we have had several ice storms, which bend the branches down. Traditionally, the branches come down for a day or two and then bounce back up to reach for the sky. This year, they, I am afraid, like the new horizontal position.  The birds love the bay; it houses a colony of juncos who wait every morning for me to put out their seed on the ladder. A towhee emerges every day to peck at dropped seeds. They all hide in there when it rains. When the wind blows from the west, as it does eight five percent of the time, the entire tree sways like an animate object, creature with  over one hundred arms, reaching for the sky, the house,  the grape vine, and the plum tree.

                I am not sure what to do with this creature. There are days when it feels like it is going to take over the side yard—but it does not block or shade anything of value. I don’t really want a full sized bay tree; it has been coppiced so often that it does not have a main stem to bring forth as a design feature. But it is a nice green screen.  It does add flavor to all of our soups and stews  in the winter. It blooms. It protects birds. It produces green trimmings for my cuttings of daffodils….and it sways in the breeze at dusk, a living thing just out of the corner of my eye.