These are the trees in my backyard. Technically, only the reddish one is a tree. It bears small fruits that look like plums and the raccoons love them. The tall green one—an ash—is a shrub, according to my older neighbor, who has been waging a battle against this plant for as long as I’ve lived there. The shrub’s seedlings take root everywhere and then break up the sidewalk. When they are small, they have strong thorns.

The ash shrub-trees used to grow all along the street. Eventually, my neighbor cut the one in front of his house, and when the plot between us was sold, the buyers cut down all the trees, an old oak tree, plane trees, more ashes. No place for wild growth in their sleek-design house and cemented yard. Before the building crew started, a woman living down the street came in the early morning hours to dig out the old rose bushes and carry them to her house. “Bless her heart,” my neighbor said, who hated the new construction even more than the ash trees. When they were still working on it, he used to throw trash over the fence sometimes, so he told me. Bless his heart.

Can the tree count as a table? It’s a gathering place for the birds and the squirrels, which eat the fragrant flower clusters like corn on the cob but with such fervor, the buds are always flying left and right. The squirrels also love to laze on the branches, legs hanging off to the side, bellies down. I’m never quite sure what they are doing. Is it cooling? Does it feel good? I often lie beneath the trees in the afternoon, watching the light. In the video, you can hear the birds and the neighbors’ children and sounds from the house. And cars, which have gotten louder again in the past week, after the streets were so empty in March and April.

from Simone Stirner