the miracle tree
brad good
july 2009

For a few years I have been trying unsuccessfully to grow a tree from a sapling, in the grassy area between the sidewalk and the street, on the side of my yard where the afternoon sun is, so that at the hottest part of the day, the shade would cover my patio. This already happens to some extent from a large maple tree that is across the street in my neighbor's yard. However, it has some kind of disease, and is slowly losing major limbs and it does not seem like it will be around for a long time. Also, I wanted another tree closer to my yard because it looks good and cools down the area. For lunch many days while I was out of work with Lyme disease, I would eat on my back patio. So I sat there for a couple of months looking at the area between the sidewalk and the street and theorizing where exactly I would put the tree, to create shade a little earlier in the day than I get it now, and also theorizing what kind of tree I would want there. I finally decided the exact location of the tree that I was going to plant someday, but I still had the problem of the sapling not making it through the winter, especially with the snow plows covering it. And I didn't want to spend a thousand dollars on a larger, more mature tree. So I just sat there looking at the spot and dreaming of what I would do. At the same time, I was reading books and watching movies about how we can create our future with what we think, and I was really starting to believe this.