We didn’t notice it as a sapling, there behind the shed, sheltered by the fence. We were too busy dealing with the immediate concerns of moving into an architectural mongrel of a fixer-upper.
By the time I realized it was trying to become a flowering tree, several seasons had passed and it was taller than I was. My husband was preparing to purge the weeds that had cropped up, and the sapling was slated for removal.
It had burst into bloom as April yielded to May. Flowers with quartets of dimpled, waxy-white petals. I insisted it be allowed to live.
Even if it’s a weed, I said, it’s a pretty one. It flowers, and it works where it is. We like our neighbors, but our houses are close, so the lilacs, the fire bushes, the ornamental plum – and this scrappy little interloper, they work as a little bit of a privacy screen for those long sunlit months when we are all out of doors for hours at a time.
The young tree with its pretty plumage fits right in.
Last summer, I realized that the house two doors down has a more mature specimen in its front yard. My tree has a parent! My brave little weed might, in fact, have an identity!
Imagine my delight when a little Googling revealed that it’s a white flowering dogwood! There’s a lesson here, something about scrappy interlopers and waiting to see what flowers, but for my part I’m going to stand here under my canopy of flowers and enjoy the accidental dogwood.
with Amazon. In 48 hours, Buck’s Landing was downloaded 7135 times in 9 countries. The book hit two best seller lists on Amazon, peaking at #41 on the Top 100 Free Kindle Books, and #15 on the Free Contemporary Romance Books for Kindle. Not too shabby!
would and put it away again. The plan for that period is to research agents and start prepping my queries. And to finish drafting the second New England Seacoast Romance.
