Mimosa’s Revenge
The wife and I agree on a lot of things, but we disagreed on the mimosa tree.
We both see faces in the clouds, we both believe dogs talk, fungi have a master plan, and the wind is music. We’re both convinced trees have motives. And just as it always turns out pretty clear in the end who is crazy, I think it turned out pretty clear in this case who was right.
Of course, the wife would say, it depends on who you ask.
Our disagreement didn’t rear its head until the thing had gotten ridiculously big—like your kids, one day they’re farting around in Pampers, and the next they’re applying to graduate schools—it happened so fast—insidiously, I would say—it was an issue before you noticed.
She loved the tree. She loved its multi-trunks—like giant fingers reaching to heaven—its pink blooms in the summer, their heavenly fragrance, the way it attracted butterflies, and birds flitted in and out of its branches, singing. It had found the perfect niche, she said, in our yard, and was just being itself and meant no harm.
I didn’t love the tree. For starters, I’m sorry, but mimosas are trash trees. In fact, they’re not even really trees at all, just overgrown weeds. She said I was bitter. Wrong—I was just telling the truth. I admit, things happen fast—but in this case, unnaturally fast—mimosas have some kind of hormone imbalance—they’re little, they’re big—just like that. What’s the hurry? Why can’t they take their time like a classy white oak? Because, as I said, they’re not really trees. And speaking of white oaks, we had two beautiful ones along the fence line, and the mimosa had squatted right between them, clogging the view. And it was a nice view, over a meadow sloping westward toward a distant line of trees—such sunsets!
Plus, and this is where the wife and I really parted ways—I knew the thing meant plenty of harm. It was evil.
Mimosas got imported from Asia or somewhere—they’re invasive—the Burmese python of plants—and have always felt like they had it better somewhere else and it pisses them off. Like kudzu—you think kudzu took over everything because it’s happy? No—because it’s mean. All of this trash vegetation is like that loser in school who didn’t get the memo that he was a loser but thought he was better than everybody else, and had to ruin your life to prove it. The one that probably ended up in politics—one of the less effortful ways people full of shit can survive. Cleaned-up looking on the outside, trash on the inside.
Mostly, when I was outside, I steered clear of the Frankenstein tree, which in itself pissed me off—can’t even go where I want on my property? Unacceptable. But when I did go near it I could feel its seething hatred. And I’m sure it could feel mine because I was having fantasies about cutting it down. No, no, don’t cut it down! went the wife. Don’t hurt the little thing! Little? I kept fantasizing—such was the power I, the mobile one, had over its stuck in the ground ass. I could hear its hissing curses and maledictions at me, wishing I would eat one of its loathsome pods in the fall—as if I didn’t know they were poisonous. Did I mention it wasn’t that smart of a tree either? Sometimes when the wife wasn’t home I would take the chainsaw down there and start it and just walk around the damn thing going rrrr! rrrr!
I admit I was becoming obsessed.
Then the wife went on one of those escape-winter cruises with her cruise girlfriends—gone nine days!—but I didn’t go out to the Moose lodge, I just sat at home and brooded. For the first couple of days I haunted the sun room glaring across the lawn at the freak of nature, as the voice in my head just got louder and louder, until something snapped. I took the chainsaw down there and this time I wasn’t playing. My only regret was that it was winter and I didn’t know if the thing was awake enough to feel what was happening to it.
It didn’t matter. It happened anyway.
I lugged the pieces of the carcass to the street for pick-up, and paid a guy a hundred bucks to grind the stump into oblivion.
And just like that, the view was back.
* * *
What’s different? the wife asked when she got home. Fortunately she was in good spirits because she had left the ship up five grand on the slots. Nothing cheers her up like that.
What do you mean? I said.
She was looking out the window. Something looks different, she said.
Well, damn. She wasn’t even sure what it was. Maybe this wasn’t going to be all that bad. I cut down the mimosa, I said.
Oh, Milton, why? I loved that tree. You should have checked with me first.
I couldn’t, you would have said no.
I won five thousand dollars, she said.
* * *
Spring was especially lovely when it came. I felt like I could breathe again after the exorcism of a venomous presence, with a new vista directly into the summer sunsets, through the white oaks, beyond the western lawn.
I walked often to the newly sanitized spot, envisioning a little circular flower bed there. April came, I bought the flowers, the wife planted them—I mean, you get over things—and life seemed pretty good until I noticed the first sprouts.
They were popping up in a hundred places all along the root lines reaching fifty feet in every direction around the ground-up trunk. The lawnmower made quick business of that, and I just accepted the fact that I was going to have to be vigilant. Easy enough. For a while.
Then the days got hotter and I got lazier and sometimes a week would go by and I would find the yard filled with two or three foot tall sprouts. As summer came, things got worse. I just wasn’t in the mood and could let a couple of weeks go by until the “sprouts” were six feet high and I would have to break out the chainsaw again. For a while I dragged the refuse to the street, but before long I was just leaving the trash where it fell, and it all started piling up. The wife stayed on me like white on rice, and sometimes I would make a half-hearted attempt to clean it all up, but never really pulled it off. New trees were boldly bursting up all over the lawn, and with all the remains of their deceased ancestors around them, sometimes it was just too much trouble to get a clear shot at them with the chain saw.
Their reach expanded. Soon they were getting uncomfortably close to the house. I was spending a couple of hours every day with the chain saw, which of course reached a point where it wouldn’t start anymore. I took it in—the guy said a week—it ended up being nine days. Nine days with a hand saw, a bush axe, and a sling blade, and by then some of the newer sprouts were up to the roof, and while I was spending all my energy fighting them, the lawn was becoming completely choked. The neighbors on both sides watched the creeping consumption and threatened lawsuits if anything crossed the property line. Like I could stop that!
I was in a fight for my life, and you know what? It was TOO MUCH! My ears were constantly ringing with the sound of evil laughter. I was spending all my days cutting, hacking, dragging. Then one day I stopped in my tracks and tried to believe I was not seeing what I was seeing—a healthy, very happy looking mimosa spewing out of the chimney. Do something, do something! harangued the wife. I had several landscaping guys come out there, but they all just shook their heads and said I had an infestation. I know I have an infestation! I told them. What I want to know is what can I do about it?
Move, the last guy said, and laughed. He left and I didn’t call any more after that.
The branches now had completely engulfed the roof, and inside it was dim all the time because all the windows were smothered. We learned to live with it. Then sprouts started snaking their way out the AC vents, and I hacked them off at the floor and we lived with that. But when I went in the john one day and sat down and suddenly felt a bad surprise underneath and leapt to my feet with a scream, that was it! I mean, absolutely IT!
You shouldn’t have cut that tree, the wife reminded me.
Yeah, I said, maybe next time I tell you something is evil, you’ll listen.
That was a tree minding its own business, she said, this is evil.
But the worst part is, I don’t really feel that evil anymore. No hostility, no gloating. Just a vegetative sense of inevitability.
And when we moved, I’m pretty sure I heard a voice say—Ah! We can breathe again.
February 15, 2024