Huckleberry in Pine Stump with Redberry Tree – For Mom

In this five-year project I had a two-hundred foot diseased Monterey Pine professionally cut down, but requested they keep a three-foot high stump—which they then scored the top off. I did burnings to hollow it further. Then purchased a Mountain Ash from Oregon because my mother, Mardythe, of Irish extraction, always felt special about the Rowan tree, one of Ireland’s sacred trees, and a name in our own family tree. (I lived on Rowan Bryn avenue when I did semester abroad at Trinity College, Dublin.) I planted the tree in the stump, fertilized by her ashes—but the sapling died. So I replaced it with a huckleberry bush, which naturally grow in Redwood stumps. It is doing quite well. Uncannily, an invasive redberry tree grew up just next to it, and, with its red berries, eerily mimics the Rowan Tree which I had intended to plant. Nice work, Mom! I can still feel your impact in the garden every day.