Seed

Last spring, the tree next to the neighbor’s house dropped a thousand tiny round seeds that blew into our yard and piled up in the patio like autumn leaves.

The Siberian Elm is not a great shade tree and does not bear fruit. It must have come up volunteer, because nobody would plant a tree that close to a house. The bottom branches are already scraping the rooftop, and the roots must be deep into the foundation. It’s amazing how with water, sunlight, and time such a little thing can grow so large.

We swept up all the seeds we could see and hauled them out of the yard, but it wasn’t enough. By fall, hundreds of waxy-leaved, wiry little trees were coming up everywhere, in the flowerpots and the rock garden and the cracks in the pavement.

It made me wonder, if nobody were here to mind them, how long it would take these seedlings to become a forest and take over the house.