JOY ALONG THE WAY: CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Some years ago a Mrs. Stubbs on West Broadway conceived the idea of planting a pink and white dogwood in the same hole. Both thrived. The pink and white blossoms intermingled, creating a curiosity for those who didn't know what had been done. When the appreciators found out, they began to copy the procedure and pink and white "calico" dogwood trees began to spring up all over town.

Surely nature doesn't copy man's experiments, but I have a curious case in my back yard. A mock orange bush, a wild cherry tree and an elderberry bush are all coming up in the same space as if planted together.

I can understand what happened. The mock orange went in first, purposely. Then, in some ensuing year, a windblown wild cherry seed must have lodged at the base of the mock orange and, at first, the sprout was unobserved. The sprout began to take over the food in the soil, enabling it to grow faster than the mock orange. I was torn with indecision as to which one I would let stay. I assumed the wild cherry, sapling by that time, to be a descendant of the immense wild cherry tree that once graced my yard and made a happy home for the birds. Too, its great patch of summer shade was welcomed by picnickers. I grew sentimental about the cherry sapling. Besides, I had other mock orange shrubs. Procrastination prevailed. Both stayed in place.

Then, sometime later, a seed from some elderberry bush lodged at the base of the wild cherry tree. It took root and flourished as only elderberry shrubs can, outgrew the other two in circumference. I let it be. Elderberry bushes were a part of my childhood, decorating old rail fence corners, providing a green canopy for playhouses constructed underneath. The big lace-doily blossoms were as sweetly perfumed as any mock orange blossoms.

The whole tripartite planting still stands. It is not visible to passersby. Probably only Schippers, the happy lawn care man, and I know about this -- what shall I call it? Curiosity? Monstrosity? Product of lazy landscaping?

I'm tempted to let all three grow and await the survival of the fittest. If I do I suspect it will be the wild cherry tree. Things which put down the deepest roots seem to grow better and faster to overcome competition and the ravages of time. This is for humans, too. So, a reverse? Man copies nature?

To put down deep roots in the soil of truth, conviction, and belief in absolutes steadies one against the onslaught of vague theories and shallow, shadowy, temporary value things that would lodge against our "roots" and try to take over.

I think, though, that despite my sentimentality for the three-in-one curiosity and object lesson derived therefrom, I will have the whole thing uprooted and some flowering tree put in as some little girl suggested we do in memory of those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

"But it will be in your back yard!" you might protest.

"That's just where I want it," I would reply.

I cringed a little when John Sununu of TV's Crossfire called Oklahoma and, by inference, the Heartland, America's back yard. The cringing was caused by the fact that some folks do tend to put their unwanted things in the back yard, and I wondered if that is the way East Coast people think about Middle America.

Maybe John didn't mean it to be deprecatory. Maybe he had in mind the back yards of the southland homes which are the beauty spots in that region and was outraged that anyone would despoil what he considered the beauty spot of America.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all who could would plant a flowering tree or shrub to show that glorious beauty can come out of a dastardly deed? It wouldn't erase the deed, of course, but lay a flowered blanket over it as we go on working toward life as we'd like it to be.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.