During a meeting a few weeks ago, our manager Kristy, asked a question:
"What do we sell?"
I remember thinking at first what a ridiculously simple question and therefore an even simpler answer. Beauty, instant colour, serotonin and an instant “Dopamine boost”, My mistake was that I was thinking primarily in terms of the large selection of colourful annuals in bloom in the sales area. I realized I was wrong when Kristy answered her own question;
“We sell hope, we sell the future”
Now, it might have been a little bit of heat stroke but at that moment I cannot lie, I was a little confused. I was thinking of a single season, the beautiful hanging baskets and planters we put together every spring to sell in full bloom and ready to go. What I was not thinking was in terms of perreneals, shrubs and trees. As I went about my afternoons work I found myself really focused on that statement about hope and the future.
I got thinking about one of my favorite childhood stories that I would hear my mother tell people, about the little maple tree in our front yard. She would tell them how that first year her and my Dad lived in the house after they were married. She dug up a small flowerbed in the middle of the front yard. She went to the local garden centre and bought a tray of petunias to plant in her new flower bed. Among those flowers was a little hitchhiker, a tiny little maple seedling from a maple key that must have drifted into the tray of flowers at some point. Laughingly she planted that tiny little tree and laughed while telling the story about how those flowers were so much bigger than that little tree.
Now, by the time I was old enough to listen to the story about the tree, the little flower bed was gone and the maple tree was just big enough for my mother to park the baby carriage in the patch of shade just big enough to shade the carriage. She had to go out and move my sleeping little brother every so often to keep him sleeping in the shade on a hot afternoon. A tiny seedling smaller than a flower, to big enough to shade a sleeping baby in only a few short years. As the years rolled on and more baby brothers arrived that tree was our finish line, goal post, and dance partner. If mom wanted to take our picture we heard “go stand by the maple tree”.
I realised that we must have hundreds of pictures of this tree and I got snooping through a few old pictures with the help of my sister. Prom dates, engagement photos, my brothers without shirts on, why did they never wear shirts? I laughed when I saw two pictures of my sister, one of my sister standing beneath the tree in her wedding gown, 23 years after my mother planted the little hitchhiker. The second picture of my sister, 13 years later, a new wedding dress, a new and improved groom, same maple tree.
At my house the lilac tree I planted when we first moved in 10 years ago now gives the shade and privacy I knew it would when I brought it home in my little Toyota echo. I didn't bring that little tree home in my tiny car thinking “I want it to stay this way” my plan was that in a few years it would cover my living room window and give us privacy from neighbours. I bought that tree for the future, not for the present moment. Cut flowers and annuals teach us to live in the moment but trees and shrubs are an investment in the future.
In 1972 my mother laughingly planted a tiny tree with no real expectations. Now, 54 years later the tree is big enough to shade more than one of my brother's trucks on a hot summer day. The branches are thick and strong for all the nieces and nephews to climb on. We still gather under the tree to take our family photos as the size of the group continues to grow.
The size of the maple tree now makes the original house look small. Looking through those pictures made me realize that tree was more than a tree, it was a member of the family. I’m confident that when the time comes one of my brothers will purchase the farm and it will remain in the family. Even with all the history this tree has with us, even now, I still see hope and a future.
Written by WGC Employee Elaine K.
