I was hoping to rake up the leaves and mulch them this weekend, but the dogwood isn’t quite ready.
This tree is the ‘problem child’ of the garden. When we bought it, we thought we were getting a dwarf variety of a Chinese dogwood, but it now seems likely that the nursery sent us the wrong one, because ours is too tall to be a dwarf.
It’s also supposed to be covered in white flowers in the spring and red berries in the fall, which has never happened. We’re not sure why it doesn’t flower. It could be that it doesn’t get enough light or that the soil isn’t quite right, or that we planted it too close to the birch tree. These are the challenges of gardening in a small, urban space.
But for all of its flaws, the tree has elegant, twisting branches, and the leaves turn a nice shade of burned orange in the fall. For the past few weeks, it’s been a cloud of color hovering over the garden.
Like most of us, it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.
