Monuments of weeds and gentrification

Not long before I moved to this block, the city started a pilot program. They redesigned the block to be a multi-use space, a place to walk, drive, bike and even play in the street. They put in random gardening plots, forcing cars to theoretically slow down. They put in trees, and plants and then they forgot about us.

Five years later, the plots now sit as thrown out overgrown poems with stanzas of weeds. Some times they serve as forts for the neighborhood dogs to win and lose in the still of a hot day. Sometimes they become mini landfills overnight. And then there are moments like these that they loom as monuments to gentrification, alive with whatever will exist throughout a war. I have heard that dandelions can live just about anywhere.

Last night as the rain was just becoming a storm, it seemed like a good idea as any to work on the plot in front of my house. It seems like my plot is a beacon for volunteer trees, and one began much too close to another one. All it took was a warm winter for this a little seed to become a 6 foot tall giant stealing space it was not meant for and had no fruit to offer as means of rent.

It's a sad thing to fell a tree and this is my second this spring. It took 6 of us-- two being onlookers-- to tie the tree to a truck bumper and yank it out. It gave way with a pop and it's roots stayed completely intact, as if it always knew that one day it would be forced out with no home to ever return to.