My Blackthorn is a tree - Sarah Wheeler
Long-listed written pieces of 250 words or under submitted to the 2021 Urban Tree Festival writing competition on the theme of “trees close to you”
My Blackthorn is a tree
It’s not a tree. Other Half is adamant. It’s a bush.
Wiki proves unhelpful. Height and girth, it seems, only get you so far. Defining tree is a complicated matter. Other Half thinks he’s clinched it though, curtesy of David Allen Sibley, a dendrologist, he’s just met on Google.
If you can walk under it, it’s a tree; if you have to walk around it, it’s a shrub.
He points at Blackthorn, barely distinguishable from the rampant undergrowth, and laughs. A little too hard. “Try walking under that. ”
Difficult, I admit.
In winter, Blackthorn looks more like a badly constructed bonfire than a tree. Unlike solitary Oak, regal even when naked. Or serpentine Yew, curled round a rusty stake in the churchyard. Both silent witnesses of history. And both, undisputedly, trees.
Refashioned, Blackthorn never became a ship’s beam. Nor, curved into a bow, pierced any hearts at Agincourt. A remnant of ancient hedge, it squats in a No Man’s Land of scrub and brambles, a guest who’s outstayed his welcome.
It’s Blackthorn though which greets me every morning, marking the passage of my year. Pinhead blossom merging with the vestiges of frost, branches heavy with a surfeit of berries as summer wanes. Then velveteen sloes, bitter-sweet with the promise of winter firesides and woody gin.
“Why does it matter, anyway?” Other Half asks after sixty seconds of stony silence.
“I don’t know”. Unable to articulate how deeply Blackthorn roots me to this place, I shrug. “It just does. ”
Sarah Wheeler - Erstwhile lawyer, aspiring writer, frazzled mother. Sometime Londoner, returned to my rural roots. Now often found outside, with a double expresso, talking to hens. Twitter: @hill_wheeler
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