Another goodbye

The Japanese Maple in the front yard has clearly been stressed for some time, and my best efforts to care for it haven't seemed to help. After many failed attempts to identify the problem, I finally searched on the right terms this week, and was able to diagnose it. Unfortunately, it's almost certainly verticillium wilt, which is always fatal to Japanese Maples.

I planted the tree sixteen years ago. The house is very close to the sidewalk, and I wanted a psychological barrier between the two. I didn't want to put up a fence with such a small yard, but I wanted separation from the constant foot traffic.

At that time, it was the only interruption in a lake of grass. The only areas planted were a strip in front of the house with some tulips and daffodils and a narrow strip along the front walk where I'd put in pansies and petunias.

This was in 2000. By this time, Sandy had
planted much of the front yard, largely based
on the tree's current size. But it would get
much, much bigger!

From the day it went in, that tree has been the centerpiece of the yard. At $50, I considered it a major investment. When it was young, we protected its bark from Prudence's claws after she started using it as a scratching post. As it grew older, it became the favorite hiding place for a series of our cats (and sometimes other cats); it's where Grumpus had been hanging out the day I picked him up and brought him inside the house for the first time.

Over the years, as Sandy planted flowers, she worked around the maple. She complained each year that it encroached on her space. But it had seniority, barely, and it was majestic, so it (and I) always won that battle. 

Several years ago, it developed a worrisome habit of leafing out slowly, from the tips first and then gradually filling in. But it always filled in. In 2010, I decided maybe it had been suffering from neglect, so in January, I snipped off its dead branches (mostly small twigs), weeded the area under it thoroughly, fertilized it, and mulched it with fresh compost. That spring, it leafed out normally, and I was sure I'd found the solution.

This is the view from the front porch in 2010, when the
tree seemed to be doing fine, and everything around it
was lush and abundant, too. (And there's our little black
VW Golf, and the smoke tree, too, as a bonus.)

But 2011 was a weird winter and, despite my efforts, the tree returned to its odd leafing pattern. This time, though, there was a blank spot through the summer. And this year, though I tended it as I had in 2010, the blank spot is much larger. From the front door, it looks fine; from the sidewalk, it's skeletal.

Turns out that's characteristic of verticillium wilt (VW), which is prevalent in Northwestern soil. Japanese maples are vulnerable to VW. Younger trees sometimes die within days; older, established trees like mine can take years to decline, as the tree isolates the VW somewhat successfully at first. A year of remission is common, but the disease is always fatal. Once again, I'm helpless; no matter what I do, it's going to die. The timing of this discovery is poignant and unfortunate, I think.

It's not that it was Sandy's tree. I planted it before we'd even talked about her moving in. And she had a love/hate relationship with it. But I've always loved it. It symbolized my early efforts to transform this house into a home, and it was the only thing in the yard that we never changed. Removing it will leave a gaping hole in the center of the canvas Sandy planted. I hope I can figure out how to make that transition gracefully before the time comes, but this week, I'm just allowing myself to mourn my inability to save the tree as I try to accept that I was unable to save Sandy.