Whenever I succeeded in working loose a tiny tree, I placed it like
a trophy beside me on the narrow sidewalk that surrounded the house.
There were ash shoots, elm, maple, box elder, even a good-sized catalpa,
which my father placed in an ice cream bucket and watered, thinking that
he might find a place to replant it. I thought it was a wonder the treelets had
persisted through a North Dakota winter. They'd had water perhaps, but
only feeble light and a few crumbs of earth. Yet each seed had managed to
sink the hasp of a root deep and a probing tendril outward.