So Many Dishes

There is a tall, slender queen palm in front of our house. This morning, it was one of three. Now, the other two are gone.

You don’t think about losing trees, especially ones as imposing as these. Unfortunately, like us, trees are susceptible to diseases. Ganoderma butt rot is a fungal disease that attacks various types of palms, and our queens were susceptible. We had spotted a conk, the bracket fungus that is a sign of Ganoderma, on one of the trees a couple of months ago. Last week, I noticed that the crown of one of the other trees looked sickly. I looked at the base and there, hidden by some shrubs, was a very large conk. Ken and I are well aware of the irony of disease infecting trees in the yard of a plant pathologist, but it is what it is

We knew the palms would need to be removed before next hurricane season, but our “tree guy” convinced me that they weren’t safe. He kicked one of the trunks and I could see it shudder. Indeed, it turned out that his crew had to be extra careful as they sawed off sections of the trunks; the instability made it difficult to control where they fell.

I sat in the house, listening to the thud, thud as sections fell to the ground, thinking of our first winter in this house. A hard freeze was predicted for Christmas Eve of 1989, and we covered as many plants as we could, to protect them from the cold. The palms were small enough that we were able to throw old sheets over them.

There’s one palm left. The chances are, it’s been infected, too. Meanwhile, the sea grape tree that we planted below the palms continues to thrive. So we will enjoy the trees as they are now, for as long as we can.