Making Peace With My Magnolia

IT CROWDS THE HOUSE. IT SHEDS LEAVES. IT BLOOMS ONCE. AND YET ...

- Joy Thompson Dingee

In the front yard of my grandmother’s house in Hattiesburg, Miss., there was a giant tree. My cousin Judy and I played beneath it as children. We couldn’t have been more than 3 and 4 years old, respectively. It was the first tree we ever climbed.

In my memory it is a magnolia, with a massive trunk and smooth, thick branches low enough for us to sit on and dangle our legs under a canopy of leaves that inspired the beginnings of our world of make-believe.

When my husband and I retired and built our cottage by the sea after 30 years of living in a dry western climate filled with scrub oak and ponderosa pines, I had to have a magnolia. The landscaper asked where I wanted it placed, and I naively replied, “Where I can see it.” They planted it about five feet from our back porch, in a bed of azaleas. It was just a stick then. But in the past 15 years it has grown to almost four stories high and 20 feet across.