Baker's Branch

  “From little acorns, mighty trees doth grow,” the poet said. He meant oak trees; I mean cottonwoods. Nothing grows quicker, bigger, from a smaller point of origin than my grandchildren, but, still, the poet’s point is well taken. I saved a cottonwood sapling in my yard alongside the driveway, the same diameter as my little finger, from certain death about thirty years ago. I paused to look at it as I rode up on it sitting on my lawnmower. It had not been there the week before, seemingly, but now there it was, no more than two-and-a-half feet tall, maybe three, thrusting proudly towards the sky while leaning its length out over the driveway. I had long wanted a cottonwood in my yard, already choked with oaks, to feed the squirrels leaf buds in May, and attract orioles who like to nest as high as sixty feet above ground. Everybody needs an oriole or two in their yard. Short scrubby oaks won’t bring them. Here I had one, unexpectedly and overnight as it were. I thought God had forgo...