On a June day in 1982, I came home from my maternal grandmother’s funeral to find a scraggly little American Redbud tree blooming in my front yard for the first time since I’d planted it there several years earlier. The tree had been a gift from Grandma, who’d heard me say I’d like to have such a tree, and had gone out and bought it for me. It had never flourished and I’d given up on it and decided to let it die that summer. It did just that, but first it bloomed, paying tribute, I have always believed, to the memory of a remarkable woman. Continue reading →