we bought our daughter a birch tree for one of her single digit birthdays, back when she loved trees the way some girls love puppies. we were warned at the nursery to plant and tend the birch very carefully, because, in the words of the arborist, “birches are drama queens.” here we are a decade or so later, and, to our enormous relief, our 17 year old daughter is not a drama queen, but her birch tree just started turning yellow this week, several weeks early, as a way of complaining, somewhat passive-agressively, about its treatment at our hands. it might be hot, or thirsty, or too shaded. we don’t know. we just know there’s a lot of drama.

two birch trees

saint paul, minnesota