The Good Men Project

By MARK ELLIS

Ten years ago, my girlfriend, who we’ll call Sharon for privacy’s sake, planted a copse of bamboo outside my family-room window. I’ve never paid much attention to matters horticultural; indeed, the yard and its myriad life forms were utterly her domain, but I know why she planted the bamboo. It was a response to my neighbor’s removing a venerable elm tree from the location. In Sharon’s world, that was an unpardonable offence and crime against nature.

She was near tears that Saturday morning when she woke me with the news that the “idiot neighbor” had a crew out attacking the elm. I followed her blearily to the window, and sure enough, two limb-jockeys were opening God-awful gashes in the canopy of leaves.

“Why are you doing this?” Sharon assailed the owner who stood by, but he was smart and scurrilous enough to shrug his shoulders and keep his mouth shut. I reckoned his reasons for removing the tree were the usual ones: for increased sunlight and less of the often considerable bother involved in raking leaves and other yard cleanup. But I dared not mention any logical reasons for such a removal to Sharon. No, my best bet was to join with her in the demonization of the tree-slayer, to share her sense of grievance and loss.

I remember damning him over coffee that morning, “Idiot.”  

The view out my window had featured a panoply of the seasons as experienced by an elm. Fallow-branched in winter, it would start a gorgeous cycle of budding growth in spring; come to full, hardy, waxy green eloquence in summer; and turn handsomely in October to all the reds, yellows, and golds associated with fall. Removal of the tree created a view of the neighbor’s mossy rooftop and pedestrian back yard. Sharon was determined to regain our privacy and lot aesthetics in the quickest way she knew how.

Just over the fence from the scene of destruction, which now featured a sad pile of neatly stacked elm firewood, she planted the few bamboo stalks that came in a plastic pot from Home Depot. Within the year the small stand had fanned out over the fence and was reaching for the sky.

Thenceforth the bamboo, which I have since learned is actually a species of grass, grew prodigiously, unstoppably. It is amazingly resilient. Neither summer’s roasting, 100-degree-plus days nor winter’s most intractable freezes seem to have any effect on it whatever. It has turned one entire side of the house into a wilderness area. There’s a gate in there somewhere, though no one has been able to walk through it for years. 

It is said that in tropical climes you can actually sit and watch the bamboo grow. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the copse Sharon nurtured to life a decade ago is now a veritable wall of slender stalks and light green leaves that rustle against the eaves with every gust of wind.  I can tell you this: The sight of my neighbor’s roof and backyard is a distant memory. In fact, the bamboo has outlasted the neighbor who took down the elm. Unfortunately it also has outlasted Sharon, and the joke now is that unless something is done, it will outlast and perhaps overwhelm me. 

*****

Mark Ellis is a writer in Portland, Oregon.

[Photo by rcbodden]