I don’t quite remember when I first met the gardener. In some strange way, I feel as if I have always known him. It must have been sometime in the early 2000s when I was studying at the University of Guelph. I suppose it doesn’t quite matter when it was. Every little meeting with the gardener was just as interesting and as curious as the first. He always had some peculiar tale to tell. One of those tales was called These Old Roots, and it went like this…

            It was sometime in early July. I remember I was passing through the area on my way to visit my parents for a few weeks. I had just finished my third year at university, and I was going to be starting a research-assistant position later in the summer with a professor in the English department, but for the time being I was free to read and sleep and wander about. The summer was very hot and dry that year.

            When I stopped to visit the gardener, I found him entrenched in the care and tending of his vegetable garden and a new patch of strawberry bushes he had just planted that spring. He hoped for them to grow strong and deep so they would return year after year with beautiful, delicious fruit. He was outside watering many times a day.

            There was a well on his property, and he was very happy for it. The township had placed a ration on using town water for things like gardening. But watering was a very important element, perhaps the most crucial, to ensuring a healthy, thriving garden. It was even crucial for healthy people gardens.

            “People gardens?” I remember asking him.

            He nodded. “Aren’t we also living in a garden?” he said. “Anyway, I tend to think so.”

            The gardener said odd little things like that sometimes. And he went on telling me about how he was very busy and keen to keep his strawberries well-watered so that they would grow strong and perennial.

            However, the other day, while he was busy watering, going about from the well mouth to the strawberry patch and back with the watering can, he heard an unusual sound coming from the edge of his yard.

            It sounded as if a very old man was groaning. Not necessarily in pain, but rather in some discomfort, irritation, and impatience.

            The gardener said that at first he thought nothing of it and went on watering his strawberries. Sometimes there are funny sounds here and there, and the mystery of them is something to welcome. He finished his tending, and then put away the watering can next to the well top, and went inside. He made a little cucumber sandwich and took a nap. The gardener was a great enthusiast for naps.

            That evening, when he came out again to give his strawberries a little drink, he once again heard the strange groaning. This time, he said, the influence of curiosity was far too great to resist, and he paused in his tending and went in search of the sound.

            Now here’s the part of his tale that I obviously don’t believe. Or maybe I believe some of it, but certainly not everything.

            The gardener said the sound was coming from a tree at the edge of his yard. There were several trees in that area, but he said he tracked the sound down to an old birch tree with wispy, curling, papery bark.

            The tree had been making the noise as he approached, but then abruptly stopped. The gardener stood and waited to hear if the sound would come again. After a short moment, it did.

The tree groaned.

            It was truly the sound of an old man or old woman groaning with fatigue, as if having to stand from a chair where they had been sitting for a very long time.

            The gardener remarked that the sound, coming from a tree, was rather a bit unsettling and even chilling to his sensibilities of what was natural. However, his innate love of plants and trees drew forth from him a sudden and unflinching sympathy for the old birch, and he reached out and planted his hand upon the dry paper-like bark.

            “Do you mind?” said the tree. “That’s rather a private spot you’ve laid your hand on.”

            The gardener withdrew his hand at once and almost jumped with fright. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “Very sorry, indeed.”

            Now, the gardener paused in his tale at this point because he could see the amusement and doubt in my face. I was listening, but it was all rather absurd. He said he wasn’t offended if I didn’t believe him. He had scarcely believed it himself at the time. He asked if I wanted him to continue, and I promised him I would do my best to suspend disbelief. He chuckled at this and went on with his tale…

            The gardener was rather astounded that the tree could speak, and at his great luck to be there at that moment to witness it. He had always wished that trees and plants would have voices that we could hear, for he had so many questions about roots and life-lines and what sorts of things trees remembered. Of course, in that moment, all of his questions fell out of his head the instant the tree actually started to talk.

            The old birch had no clear apparatus for speech ¾ no face or mouth or eyes for expressions ¾ its voice simply emitted from within like an eccentric form of vibration.

            “You’d be wise to keep your hands to yourself,” the birch said. “And I don’t care for climbing either.”

            “Yes, of course,” said the gardener.

            “Now what do you want?”

            “Me?” The gardener felt almost embarrassed to put on the spot. “Oh, umm, nothing,” he stammered. “It’s just I thought I heard you groaning… Are you hurt?”

            “Well, I suppose that depends on how you define the word hurt,” said the old birch. Am I in physical pain? No, I don’t really feel pain in such a way. Am I suffering? Now that is a different matter altogether.”

            “Why are you suffering?” asked the gardener.

            “Because I am trapped,” said the birch. “And because of this I believe I am dying.”

            The gardener remarked that this was a particularly distressing thing for him to hear, as he very much feared the death of any plant.

            “But how are you trapped?” the gardener asked. “Perhaps there is something I can do to help.”

            “I wouldn’t think there is,” said the birch. “My time in this place has simply come to an end, and I think I ought to move on somewhere else.”

            “Somewhere else? But you’re a tree.”

“I am, indeed.”

The gardener was a bit confused. “So, you mean you would…”

            “Uproot,” said the birch. “That’s the saying, isn’t it?”

            “I guess it is,” said the gardener. “That would be a remarkable.”

            “Yes, I think it would. But I don’t know if I have the energy for it. Or should I say, the will.”

            “It must take a great amount of strength…”

            “More than you can imagine,” said the birch, and then it let out a slow groan. “But I fear this spot has simply come to its end. You see, there are two things I need. Healthy soil and strong sunlight. I’ve always told myself that I could live with just one if not the other. I could accept living in relative shade if the soil was nutrient; or I could manage to live with poor soil if the sunlight was enriching and full. But I simply cannot live with the lack of both. And I’m afraid the soil in this spot has expired its once plentiful riches, and afraid these tall maple trees behind me have all but blocked the sunlight from reaching me.”

            It was true, the gardener reflected in that moment, that the two larger maple trees behind the birch had grown very tall and broad, and their combined canopy cast a heavy shadow. The gardener had never quite noticed it before.

            “I cannot help but feel that this is in some way my fault,” he said. “Perhaps I can find a way to improve the soil, and I can find someone to trim back the maples.”

            “I thank you, but it’s of no use at this point,” said the birch.

            The gardener felt ashamed at his absent-mindedness. “I truly do apologize that I’ve never really considered the soil and the shade over here. You trees have always been here, ever since I was a boy, and long before this home belonged to my parents.”

            “I remember your parents well,” said the birch tree. “This is not your fault or theirs. It is simply the passing of time. As you say, I have been since long before many other things.”

            “I will be sad to see you leave,” the gardener said.

            The old birch groaned. “Oh, I should think I’ll be around for a while yet.”

            “You will? But I thought you said it was time you moved along somewhere else?”

            “Indeed, but that is the very issue,” said the birch. “I have been here so long, I am fully dug in. Rooted. I don’t think I could move on, even as I desire greatly to do so.”

            “But you said you might be dying… the soil… the sunlight…”

            “Yes, yes, I think I might be. But moving on may still be far more effort than I have to give. This is the yard where I’ve lived. It’s the yard I know. To leave this place is, well, it’s a little bit frightening…”

            The gardener nodded. In his own simple way, he knew exactly what the birch meant. It made him reflect for a moment on his own sense of home ¾ the home of his parents ¾ and he wondered, perhaps for the first time, if he would ever leave.

            The birch groaned once more and said, “But please do not worry yourself with my troubles. While I appreciate your concern, there is nothing you can do. Go back to your gardens, water your strawberry patches. They look to be coming along splendidly.

            The gardener had all but forgotten about his strawberries. “Oh yes,” he said. “I should give them a drink…”

            “Indeed,” said the birch. “Indeed.”

            The gardener was a bit regretful to leave the conversation with the birch, but it seemed to have reached its natural end. And so he said good-day and returned to the toil of his vegetable garden and his strawberries and gave them all a good drink.

            And that was the end of his tale of the birch tree and its old roots.

            “Did the tree ever talk to you again?” I found myself asking.

            “No, never again,” said the gardener.

            “Do you still hear it groaning sometimes?”

            “No, the groaning has also stopped,” he said. “It’s just that birch over there at the edge of the yard.”

            I had to admit that even though his tale was pure fantasy or delusion or both, I did look at the tree a little differently at that moment.

            “I suppose it just didn’t have the will to leave after all,” the gardener said.

            “Would’ve been remarkable,” I said.

            “You wouldn’t even believe it.”

            I stayed a little longer and we chatted this and that and about the weather, and then I thanked him for sharing his tale, and asked if it would be all right if I wrote about it, and he said it would be fine. And he thanked me for the visit, and we said goodbye, and I went on my way to my parents.

            But here’s the really wild part.

            I drove by the gardener’s place again a few weeks after that, and the old birch tree was gone. No stump. Nothing. The gardener wasn’t home at the time, so I couldn’t ask what happened.

            Now, I know you can hire tree services to come and remove a tree completely. I’ve seen it happen. But I just don’t think the gardener is the type of person to do that. He could, but he wouldn’t.

            And so I can’t help but believe, against every reason to doubt, that the old birch tree finally found the will to pull up its roots and walk on.

End