“From One Tree”, A new offering from The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena

Before the Gardener moved onto land with a house she spent many years in a brick tower in the city. There her rooms were lit by the changing colors of the Sycamores outside the windows. Summers were dark, with a heavy cast of green oxide. Autumn showered the walls with gold, and in winter the air became blue.

The apartment building shared one side with an alley and here, on her daily walks, the Gardener began to notice unusual leaves scattered in the mud. The leaves were mottled with curious patterns and glowed with ruby, burgundy and lime. They seemed to have fallen from an ordinary laurel hedge, but all the other laurels in the neighborhood were monotonously dull and one color of green. She picked up one leaf and then another, and soon she was a collector, arriving each day to her rooms with pockets filled with fragile specimens. [Read more…]