The Incredible Hulk issue #2 page 20 and second print cover

The spring and fall of the dandelion tree

There was always more to do outside the house than in it. That was when I grew up. Where I grew up the yard was the lot to the right of the house and it was just big enough to keep me in it. The garden was behind it...just big enough to keep me busy all spring, all summer and well into the fall. The yard had the biggest tree in the neighborhood! As tall as it was, it had these huge leaves and was in the right spot to blanket the yard in shade all summer! Being out of the sun meant staying out longer and whether you lay in the grass or hung tight to a branch, it was the coolest...but off to the side was the dandelion tree. Not a scientific name, of course, it's just what I called it. It was planted by my father. One of the few things carried as a clipping from a place he left behind, but still a piece he could take with him. If you were to walk up to it in the earliest of the spring season it stood just under 6 feet tall. It's trunk straight and about 5 inches thick, and at the very top a round ball surrounded by the stubble of thin cut branches from the year before. A tree that was older than me, but never allowed to grow taller than I. A tree that was as important as the shade tree. Because, as the season of spring grew on, so did the tiny shoots grow from the stubbled ball at its top. With its green and yellow leaves it would start to take the shape and look of a dandelion. It grew no fruit, but the harvest was of the branches! Zip ties had not made their way into the corner stores and having a garden meant things needed to be tied together. That meant cutting a shooting branch from the dandelion tree, and it was as simple as twisting the thin end around the other. It would hold all season, and as the green branch turned brown its grip got tighter and its hold greater. When it came time to undo, it was simply clipped and composted. A method we used year after year. And as the season turned to fall the remaining branches would be trimmed off, keeping the tree's bounty from growing higher than our reach. A method carried over from generation to generation. As valuable as the shadow from the shade tree was to me as a kid, I would not be here if not for the branches of the dandelion tree. My father would tell me that it was from selling those branches as a kid he would garner the bit of money to leave the home he hated. And as the fall season came the rest of the branches would be cut, the dandelion tree ready and bare to stand against the winter and be ready for the spring. This was done every single year. The branches never really used as much as they once were but the cycle held. A few years after I bought my home my father brought me two of these trees. He started growing them from clipping of the dandelion tree I grew up with the day I moved into my new home and once they were big enough, he brought them over...we planted them together. He regretted it so much! I refused to groom them the way I would trim his dandelion tree every year. The two grew tall and strong...and after one was split in half after a storm it grew twice as tall! Twenty years I've lived with these trees, twenty years he's given me grief for not trimming them. Twenty years I would take a trip to see the dandelion tree and trim its branches till one day, a few years back, my father sat me down with a cup of coffee and said “that's enough”. I've never taken a branch from the dandelion tree since.

So here, a special place in my gallery...in memoriam of my dad.